


Happy Accidents

by Lizardlicks



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Culture, Blood, FLARPing gone wrong, Gill Kink, M/M, Or maybe right, Sensation Play, Xeno, weird mating rituals, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:58:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/pseuds/Lizardlicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Screw you sideways with a rusty culling fork.  You are a sucker.</p><p>You are soon to be a dead sucker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Secret

**Author's Note:**

> My brain served me up a complete start-to-finish story idea and I couldn't say no. Most of this will be exploring head canons for troll cultural procedure and quadrant bonding/interaction. Beta'd by the wonderful [Ushauz](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz)!

This was a bad idea from the outset, and you knew it, you _knew_ it!  You’ve never even had so much as a single inclination to delve into the world of FLARPing, not when you first heard of the dubious past time and certainly not after you got to see its long term effects on some of your friends.  So what kind of sad sack of suicidal shit for brains idiot would want to go and stick his feelers into that mess now?  Your kind, apparently.  And let’s not forget that the reason you’ve made such a terrible life decision is none other than Eridan fucking Ampora.  
  
Eridan ‘sighs dejectedly in your direction’ Ampora.  Eridan ‘I’d just like to havve some company for a little bit is all’ Ampora.  Eridan ‘It’ll just be this one time, Kar, I swwear’ Ampora.  Eridan ‘drops hints like fucking construction drone supply palettes’ Ampora.  
  
Screw you sideways with a rusty culling fork.  You are a sucker.  
  
You are soon to be a dead sucker.  
  
It wasn’t even supposed to be that fatal of a campaign.  Eridan had assured you that this adventure was a real low stakes one.  Kiddy stuff, he’d said.  No one would want to get in a serious scrape over lowbie gear, and he could get you decked out with some decent loot and then power level you.  You hadn’t understood half a word in three when he started with the game jargon, but you’d gotten the gist of it.  This was supposed to have been safe, and he was there to back you up.  
  
Ha.  And also, ha.  
  
The sad part about this is you aren’t even going to live to hear Sollux’s smug “I told you tho.”  You never thought you’d live to see the day when you actually want to hear that bastard crowing in mocking glee as his yellow text lays out paragraphs explaining what a fuck panned moron you are in excruciating detail.  
  
Instead, you’re going to die kneeling in the dirt like you’re groveling, which to be honest you would have considered if you thought it would do a lick of good, but that’s not even a remote possibility at this point.  They’ve seen you for what you are, an off spectrum freak.  Your blood is oozing, bright and cursed through your fingers where you’ve got them clamped down on your leg.  It was a feeble attempt to hide the truth, and you wasted your time trying to conceal the wound instead of going for your weapons.  
  
Welp.  
  
You want to move, to reach for your sickles so bad. You want to go out fighting, tearing a hole through the universe and anyone who dares get in your way till you can’t go on, but that chance is long gone.  The second you move, the spell of stunned shock will be broken and that will be the end of you.  It’s already starting to lift.  One of the assholes that had jumped you lets out an appalling titter.  
  
“The lauded Dualscar, cavorting with mutants!  Man oh man, this is the best day I’ve had FLARPing in a month.”  He laughs again and fingers the disastrously sharp knife he’s been brandishing- the one that bit cloth and flesh on your leg open so easily- with barely constrained glee.  He’s getting all sorts of kicks out of seeing Eridan humiliated by his mere association with you.  The troll’s partner doesn’t seem quite so mirthful.  He grimaces and gives you a look that says, ‘better you than me, buddy,’ and you wonder just how far down the spectrum he is, how much abuse he’s used to taking from his “friend” on a regular basis.  And Eridan... He’s still just standing frozen looking like someone punched him in the digestive sac.    
  
That someone was you, of course.  Metaphorically speaking.  Although you do feel a bit like boxing his gills a couple times for dragging you into this mess, mostly you just fell sick.  It’s a mystery how you can feel like a complete asshole when you’re about to be brutally murdered but there it is.  The knife wielding troll is hovering closer to you, licking his fangs like he can’t wait to carve you into bite sized pieces, but the other one coughs politely and mumbles, “Scar‘s gotta do it, Kimmy.  It’s his right”  
  
It’s Eridan that gets the first shot at you by principal.  Technically, it should be a quadrant mate, but your moirail isn’t here, and they aren’t about to go fetch her just to honor some vague tradition and risk you escaping in the process.  That leaves the person that brought you here in the first place, but he’s still trying to reboot his thought process.  
  
“Sure, yeah I know that,” knife kid replies.  He turns his feral grin on Eridan and oozes faux sympathy.  “Of course if it’s gonna be too hard for you, Orphaner, I can put your dog down.”  
  
That kicks starts something, and Eridan blinks, and glances slowly to the other two trolls before coming back to you.  He frowns, mouth pressed into a hard line.  
  
“No, I can handle it.”  Your friend unshoulders that ridiculous laser rifle and levels it.    
  
“Eridan...” You open your mouth, close it, open it again, words caught it your throat.  What can you even say at this point?  Sorry.  Don’t do it.  Choke on my heaving bulge and die.  All of it seems appropriate but none of it enough. You lock eyes instead, and he doesn’t blink or look away when he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care a this.”  
  
You do, dropping your gaze in a flinch, so you almost miss when he pivots to the right before pulling the trigger.  
  
At this range, the rifle’s beam has nothing to diffuse its power, and the leering troll in front of you crumples to glowing ash and ozone before the wind scatters him.  
  
The second troll shrieks, terrified and enraged all in one go and throws himself at the seatroll, flashing a nasty looking sword that wasn’t there a second ago.  Eridan is swinging the tip of his gun to meet him, but you can see he won’t line the shot up in time-  
  
The sickle’s grip fits easily into your hand and the solid shock that runs up your arm from the impact the hooked blade makes in flesh is a satisfying one.  It’s nice to know your combat instincts aren’t entirely crap.  The troll’s screams have gone from fear to pain with the tip of your weapon buried in the meat of his shoulder.  He’s still trying to hit something with his sword, but now it’s all awkward backhanded slashes aimed at you, and you’re small enough to make landing any kind of hit a problem.    
  
In a blink, you have the first blade’s twin out and swinging and it slices through your opponent’s neck like...  
  
Well, like steel with a freshly sharpened, unused edge though a troll.  There’s much less resistance than you were expecting and the cut goes so deep the poor sodding fuck is nearly decapitated.  Arterial spray goes everywhere, thick and brown.  Now you have the answer to a question you don’t even remember asking.  He slumps into a limp heap on the ground, and your first sickle is still stuck fast so the dead weight pulls you down with it.  You try unsuccessfully to extract it, only managing the task on the third yank.  
  
Okay, actually killing another troll is way different than practicing in your room against dummies made of shirts stuffed with other shirts.  Eridan makes a low whistle, and you’re going to take that as meaning something good and also pretend that whatever it was, you did it on purpose.  You are the bad ass.  
  
Except the bad ass is trying hard to choke down his gag reflex against the smell of blood and quite possibly shit.  Seems like the guy let go of his bowels at some point during that strife.  Eridan thankfully puts an end to that by firing his rifle into the fresh body and disintegrating it like the first.  Now you’re just trying not to breath in vaporized remains.  
  
He pauses.  A moment of tense stillness stretches out between the two of you, neither willing to make the first move, bridge the space between.  It occurs to you belatedly that Eridan could very well have been eradicating those other two first just to get rid of witnesses to his shame, and you actually did him a huge favor.  If that were true though, he could have pulled the trigger when you were still entangled with the other troll and neatly offed you both.  He stands rigid, hands gripped tight on his rifle as he looks you over, and you refuse to put down your sickles so you’re left at a stand off.  
  
Then he’s stalking toward you in a rush.  Your blades come up defensively but he slings his gun aside, and you’re left so boggled by the action for a moment that you forget to actually swing before his fingers clamp over your wrist in a vice grip.  He doesn’t stop, just sweeps past and ends up dragging you along behind him as you feebly protest.  His stride is so much longer than yours over the broken ground that you end up half stumbling along like an idiot.  Once you remember your weapons you briefly consider taking the offending hand off and fleeing, but he’s not actually hurting you, just ignoring your sputtering and snarling as he insistently marches you along.  
  
When he does come to a stop, it’s so sudden that the forward momentum you were building just to keep up pitches you forward instead, and you end up twisting in his grasp to land flat on your ass.  You’re in the shelter of an outcropping of jutting stone, somewhat shielded from roaming eyes that might happen to pass by.  There’s a sharp rock under your ass, and his continued silence has you tense and miserable, and you can’t tell which actually feels worse.  He drops to one knee in front of you and starts pulling his scarf off his neck with slightly vicious movements, and your mounting worry comes to a head.  You grab his hand when he reaches for your wounded leg.  
  
He’s shaking.  You can’t see the subtle tremors, but now that you’re touching him you can feel them ghosting through your fingertips.  
  
“Er- idan.”  You have to clear your throat and try again before you can speak without your voice cracking.  “Eridan, what are you doing?”  He takes so long to reply that you’re worried he’s refusing to speak with you entirely.  
  
“I’m dressin’ the wound.  Or do you want to bleed out?” he replies flatly.  
  
“That’s not what I-”  
  
“I told you I’ll take care a this, right?  So stop askin’!”  You wince when his voice goes that shrill.  He-  
  
Oh.  Oh god, he was actually talking to you when said that?  You swallow back the sudden lump in your throat, but it refuses to go away. You finally let him go, and he starts winding his scarf tightly around your leg.    
  
That really is a lot of blood now that you look at it.    
  
The spike of adrenaline that carried you through the fight is starting to fade, leaving you feeling nauseous and dizzy with pain.  Eridan gives the ends of his impromptu bandage a firm tug to bring it tight, and the shock goes right up to your digestive sack and makes you swoon.  
  
When you come back blinking he’s got an arm hooked under yours holding you up right, and his face is creased over with worry.  
  
“Kar?”  
  
“M’ okay,” you say as you try to bat him off.  It turns into weak pats against his chest.  Eridan doesn’t look convinced.  Before you can protest, he slides his arm all the way around your thoracic cage, pushing his shoulder under the joint of your arm then pulls you up with him as he stands.  Neither your swimming thinkpan nor your burning leg is amused by the sudden change in elevation, and you find yourself needing to lean on the solid strength of him.  With the previous bravado crushed, your plunge into the depths of embarrassment is pretty well complete at this point.  
  
You can still feel him quivering against you, quieter now but it’s there.  You press a palm to his chest and somehow it calms him.  
  
He waits until you’ve steadied yourself a bit before starting out at a slow pace.  Once you’re reasonably sure of your footing, he picks it up a bit.  It takes a stupidly long time for you to actually question where exactly it is you’re going.  You decide to blame it on the blood loss.  
  
“I’m taking you to my hiwe,” he informs you matter-of-factly when you voice the concern outloud.    
  
“What!?”  You falter and squawk before you can reign your composure back in and try to smooth it over. “We should go back to my place. It’s closer.”  It’s also not out in the middle of the ocean where you’ll have no escape from a highblood whose behavior has thrown you for one too many loops today but you still have enough sense not to blurt that last bit.  Eridan scowls anyway.  
  
“Yeah, it’s also surrounded by other trolls.  You got too many neighbors, Kar, an’ I don’t know how long that patch job is gonna hold.  Besides, I’we got plenty a supplies at my ship.”  
  
Point to him, it wouldn’t do any good to head into the moderate safety of the suburbs if your leg bleeds through his scarf before you can get out of sight.  
  
You shut up after that and let him shepherd you along until the grass starts growing in clumps and patches and the ground gives way to shifting sand dunes.  By the time you reach this point you’re favoring your injured limb so heavily it might as well be dead weight.  The place is abandoned with the weather for this time of year, still a little too blustery for the beach to be at all attractive as a gathering place.  There’s a short dock not too far away with a sleek looking sailboat moored to it that you can make an educated guess belongs to Eridan.  
  
Managing to navigate the dock doesn’t prove too difficult, but Eridan has to do most of the maneuvering to actually get you into the boat.  Your leg has turned into one indistinguishable pulsing throb by now.  In one ill-advised move, you try to put weight on it while climbing down into craft and nearly pitch over onto your face when it give out.  It’s only because Eridan still has an arm around you that you’re saved from adding a broken nose to your list of injuries.  
  
Once you get settled, you prop your offending limb up onto the seat, lean back and drape an arm over your eyes.  Shutting out visual stimulus and focusing on slow breathing helps you deal with the pain a bit.  The rocking of the waves is surprisingly comforting too...    
  
You don’t mean to actually fall asleep, just dose for a bit, but when you startle awake and glance around, you find that Eridan has already cast off and that land is fully out of sight.  The pain has actually receded into a sort of unpleasant white noise, and you can pull yourself into a sitting position without jostling it too bad.  Eridan is guiding the sail with skillful ease as the wind pushes you along.  He actually looks a lot more relaxed than he had back at the dock.  Putting his concentration into steering the ship must have put him into a better state of mind.  
  
You sit still and silent for a long while, studying the back of his head as though you’ll somehow developed some latent psychic ability and be able to pluck answers right out of his pan if you stare long enough.  Eridan should have culled you.  His casteist bullshit might not be as intense or blatant as Equius’, but you’ve never known the seadweller to shy away from spilling blood of anyone, least of all trolls below green.  You’re a mutant freak, not even on the spectrum, and he had the misfortune of being publicly embarrassed by you just existing.  Why is he being so fucking _nice_ about it?  
  
The question presses too heavy on you.  It bounces and rattles around in your pan and knocks loose bad feelings, doubt and fear that there’s something worse for you in store down the line.  You’re completely at the mercy of a kid that hasn’t been well known for having any.  He’s about as high as you can get up the spectrum and you’re not even supposed to exist.  Dying isn’t the only fate on the list of ones you could have, it’s was just the one that was most likely.  Now you can amend that with slave or highblood play toy.  
  
Okay wait just one globefondling second, this is still Eridan you’re talking about.  You’ve been friends with him for sweeps.  You’ve sat up past dawn just gossiping about stupid inane shit because one or the other of you couldn’t sleep and wanted company.  You watched him fall to pieces after he pushed for the affection of the girl he loved too hard and ended up pushing her away.  You’ve been a wall of grey sympathy and logic for him time and time again.  That’s got to still count for something.  Right?  
  
The tension is unbearable.  You cough, trying to get you words in order, and he jumps at the noise.  So you aren’t the only one still stressing about this.  Maybe that’s a good sign.    
  
“Why are you helping me?”  Nothing wanted to come together eloquently in your head, so you just spit the question out.  It sounds more bitter than you were intending.  
  
“Would you rather I threw you ower board and let you swim back?” he snips back peevishly.  “Try a be a little more grateful when someone’s goin’ out a their way for you, Kar.”  
  
“That’s my point!  You’re going out of your way to help me, but for what?  If someone else found out you could get culled right along with me for conspiracy.  I mean we aren’t even quadranted or anything, so what’s the trouble worth to you?”  You really didn't mean for that to come out sounding like an accusation but it’s too late to take it back  
  
His shoulders hunch defensively, and he turns a mouthful of bared fangs at you.  “Gee, I don’t know, could it be because you’re my fuckin’ friend?”  He looks like he wants to say more, but a gust of wind snags sharply at the sails, and he has to turn his attention back to what he was doing.  “Look just... drop it till later, okay?  I need to concentrate on this.”  
  
“Okay,” you say softly.  Great, you feel like a jackass again.  You sag in your seat and fold your arms against your chest.  
  
The rest of the trip passes in strained quiet broken by occasional awkward small talk.  It helps a little.  By the time his hive comes into view, you’ve managed to get the gnawing pit in your stomach to quiet a little, and his fins have stopped being pinned so tightly to his skull.    
  
It take you a few minutes to realize just how big Eridan’s hive is.  The thing is an honest to god fucking ship, an ancient behemoth washed up on a rocky reef island.  You think your own hive could fit into it three times over, and there would still be room to spare.  Mothergrubbing fuck, you are going to break you neck from looking up at it alone!  
  
“You live here?”  Attempts to keep the awed tone out of your voice fail spectacularly.  He chuckles.  
  
“Aye, Shipwreck sweet shipwreck.  It used to belong to my ancestor, you know.”  He slides the sailboat smoothly in alongside the dock.  The flurry of quick, precise movements he executes to get it properly parked and secured is rather rather graceful.  They fall somewhere between a dance and machine timing.  
  
“By yourself?” you ask because you can’t even begin to imagine what you would do with all this space.  He has to have servants or something.  Kidnaping you just for some company is suddenly looking like a distinct possibility.  
  
“Well,” he chews over the word, “There’s my lusus, a course and Fef...  She used to come here a lot too, I guess.”  
  
Shit.  You have got the most acute case of foot-in-mouth disease tonight than has ever existed in all of Imperial Space.  Congratulations on your Shameshitting Douchcookie of the Week award, Mr. Vantas.  Whatever are you going to do with your prize?  Curl up and die, thanks for asking.  
  
Eridan finishes securing his smaller boat and hops up on the dock with ease.  If his mood has soured again, he’s doing his absolute damnedest not the show it.  Feferi is like a sore spot in an innocuous place.  You keep forgetting it’s there until you go and whack it again.  
  
He offers a hand down to you and eases you out onto the dock in reverse of how you got into the boat in the first place, only without as much flailing about stupidly.  Throwing an arm over him and letting him escort you down the planking and across the short stretch of beach comes easier this time, you don’t fight against it.  Letting him help you up the rope ladder dangling over the side you aren’t so sure of.  
  
He crouches down into the sand and says, “Hang on to my shoulders an’ I’ll giwe you a ride.”  
  
“No I’m not being carried.  I can do it myself,” you protest and cross your arms again.  So kick you in the wastechute, you still have a little pride left and you aren’t about to throw it out like that.  Eridan lifts an eyebrow at you.  
  
“Reely.  You’re gonna climb the whole way up there while you’re down a limb.”  
  
“That’s what I said, nooksniffer.  Quit looking at me like that, it isn’t funny.”  His mouth is twisting like he’s trying very hard not to laugh.  He straightens and gestures to the ladder.  
  
“Whatever you say, Kar.”  You scowl and grab the first rung.  
  
About half way up you are seriously wishing you could take all of that puffed up pride and stuff it down your past self’s proteinchute till he strangles on it.  Your arms are burning.  To climb, you have to lock your elbows and pull up till your good leg hits another rung.  The ladder sways in the sea breeze despite you and Eridan both weighing it down and every so often you bounce off the ships wooden hull, not hard but enough to make you nervous for your tiring grip.  
  
By the time you make it over the railing you’re shaking from exertion.  You flop and sprawl on the deck rather than immediately stand.  Eridan is crouching beside you a moment later.  You expect some snarky I told you so reply but he just leans over you and waits for you to catch your breath before helping you up yet again.  It’s frightening how comfortable you’re starting to get with that.  
  
He doesn’t take you far.  Once inside he ushers you past several doors before pulling you into what has to be the biggest ablution block you’ve ever seen.  There’s a soaker tub that looks like it can fit four trolls comfortably, and he settles you on the edge of it then goes rummaging through cabinets.  You’re distracted by all the frivolous fiddly details on everything.  Even the load gapper looks like it has scroll work on it.  With seahorses. What the hell.  
  
You’re startled when your host clears his throat right next to you.  He’s taken off that ridiculous cape and turned it into a sling of sorts for whatever medical supplies he’s gathered.  Without it he looks smaller and strangely vulnerable.  Definitely less like an over the top movie villain and more like a normal troll.  
  
“Uh, I’m going to hawe to cut these off,” he says and tugs at your pant leg.  You blink at him.  
  
“Wha-- Why?”    
  
The look he gives you is somewhere around don’t-be-an-idiot-vile  “Try pullin’ the hem ower that cut either way an’ you’ll see why.”  
  
Yes, fine, that would be a bad idea.  You huff a frustrated sigh.  “They’re going to look ridiculous.”  
  
“Well, these are kind a lost for a cause by now, anyway, what with all the blood.  I’ll cut off the other side too if it will make you feel better.”  
  
“Sure.  I guess it can’t make it any worse.”  Your grip on the porcelain tightens.  “Go for it.”  
  
He starts to work at the knot in his scarf slowly and delicately.  A patch of blood did seep through and stain, but it looks like most of the bleeding has stopped by now.  Unwinding the wool from your wound pulls at the blood crusted around the edges and makes you flinch.  Once that’s out of the way, Eridan plucks a wickedly sharp looking pair of scissors from his pile of things and does exactly what he said he would.  The blades make you nervous, but he’s careful and focused.  It’s almost the same level of concentration he had used to sail his boat.  You find yourself wondering just how many times he’s had to this for himself or possibly even Vriska or Feferi in the past.  
  
Once he’s cut a slit up the side, he makes a second one all the way around just above the knee and peels back the fabric just as carefully as he had the scarf.  In the light the wound looks ugly.  It’s a long clean line dividing your flesh and makes you think obscenely of a carved oinkbeast roast.  Your stomach does an impressive flip-flop at the thought.  
  
“Kar?”  Eridan rests his hand on your knee, and it’s shockingly cool on your bare skin.  When you look at him, he’s got that same anxious expression on his face that he wore when he was first trying to bandage you up except this time he’s biting his lip.  
  
“I’m okay,” you say then try to force out a laugh.  “I just don’t think I’m going to be eating anything for a bit.”  He nods at that.  
  
“Okay but you’re goin’ to hawe to tell me if you think you’re goin’ to pass out or somefin.”  He still looks worried, glances down at the cut then back up to you before speaking again.  “This parts goin’ to hurt.  I’we got to clean it.”  
  
You breath in through your nose and nod.  “Let’s get it over with, then.”  
  
He helps you maneuver around so that your feet are in the tub then goes to the tap and starts running water till it’s washing lukewarm over your feet.  The spray wand on the wall is extendable, and he retrieves that to clean out the laceration with.  Getting it flushed with water makes you hiss through your fangs, but it’s not much worse than the pain you’ve already been in.    
  
The disinfectant makes you scream.  
  
You kind of think you might be leaving bruises on his shoulder from your grip on it by the time he’s finished with that, but he never says a word about it.  Once the blood is cleaned away the cut doesn’t look quite so awful.  Still like a filleted piece of meat and you think you’ve been put off of steak for a while, but it’s better.  Eridan pinches the edges together a couple of times and says something like, “not bad,” before reaching for another tube of something from the pile.  He dabs goopy shit along the edge of the wound where it runs deep enough to gape then presses and holds it closed one last time.  When he lets go the edges stick together.  
  
“Did you just fucking glue my leg?”  
  
“It’s surgical glue, Kar, that’s what it was made for,” he says, capping the tube and reaching for a packet of gauze.  “An’ I really didn’t think you’d want me to demonstrate my lack a’ needlecraft skills on your person.”  
  
“Good call.  I guess if I need to I can have Kanaya take a look at it later.”  It’s his turn to look a little ill.  
  
“I think maybe the less involved your moirail is in this the better it will be for my continued respiratin’.”  
  
He finishes dressing your leg in silence that weighs heavy between the two of you.   As he secures the end of a light bandage over the gauze you feel need to say something, anything.  
  
“Sorry,” is what comes out.  
  
“Sorry,” he blurts at the exact same moment, and you both do a double take.  Laughter bubbles up from a tight spot in your chest, an overflow of all the stress and worry you’ve been carrying all day, and he soon joins you.  You sit and giggle like a couple of pan fried idiots huddled together in his ablution block and thinking about how silly you’re both acting makes you laugh harder until you’re blinking tears back from your eyes.  
  
It takes a few minutes to regain some semblance of control.  Frightening as it is to realize just how close you’ve been riding next to hysteria, getting all that out feels good and little aftershocks are still filtering through you when you try to speak again.  
  
“I’m sorry for being such an insufferable shitlord about letting you help.”    
  
He sighs. “I’m sorry for gettin’ you into this mess in the first place.”  
  
Once he’s pulled you to your feet you try testing some weight on your leg and find that it’s not entirely terrible.  He takes a few minutes to clean up the disaster that’s been made of the room.  The scarf he doesn’t even try to salvage, just tosses it into the waste receptacle with your shredded pant leg, and you wince.  He catches you making a face and waves the concern away with, “I’we got more,” and leaves it at that.  
  
With clean-up finished he shuffles back over to you uneasily.  He won’t quite meet your eye, just keeps looking over his glasses somewhere at chest level and sneaking glances up.  It’s the most pitifully shy expression you’ve seen on him in a while, and you’ve seen him pretty pitiful.  
  
“So, uh,” he starts uncertainly, “I’we got a new movie and I thought since the rest of the ewenin’ was pretty terrible you might want to watch it while you giwe your leg a rest.”  
  
A tired smile tugs at your mouth.  
  
“Hell fucking yes, I do.”  He beams at you and that squeezes your heart more sharply than the expression he was wearing earlier.  

When Eridan’s arm slips around your waist for yet another time tonight, it’s comforting and familiar.  



	2. A Revalation

  
Tonight had been a night of deeply disturbing revelations, both personal and public.  The first of which being that you are stupidly and irrevocably head-over-gills for the only troll you could consider as a best friend.  Probably have been for some time actually, but you were still blinded by your first flush crush to add one and one together any sort of reliably at first, then you were in pain, and then after that you were in denial.  
  
The second is that said troll is a mutant with a deformity so abhorrent and simultaneously insidious that it should be grounds for an instant culling.  
  
In short: you are screwed.  
  
Karkat is a warm solid weight on your arm as you guide him to the closest recreationblock you can think of.  Every hitch in his breath, every stutter in his step as he favors his injured leg is another needle through your heart.  This boy is going to kill you slowly and by pieces, and he doesn’t even know it.  
  
It's not far from the ablution block where you started to your goal, but it takes a bit of time.  You go slowly to make up for Karkat’s lack of mobility, but by the time you reach the room he’s still sagging.  The night’s events were draining even for you, and you aren’t the one who lost a fair amount of blood then insisted on being independent while scaling the ladder to your hive.  You steer him toward the reclining platform for rest but are forced to stop.  
  
You’re dismayed to find your lusus sprawled across the whole blighted piece of furniture, muzzle propped on one arm and tail draping over the other.  He lifts his chin to blink at you then gives a huff and drops it back down defiantly.  You flash fangs.  
  
“Confounded sack a scales, get off a there right fuckin’ now!”  You bat at the air in a shooing motion.  “You know you ain’t supposed to sleep on my couch.”  He makes no move to comply, and you want to tear your hair out.  You really don’t feel up to hashing out a power struggle right now, especially not in front of Karkat, who’s looking back and forth between you quizzically.  You untangle yourself from him and make sure he’s steady on his feet before turning back and stomping toward the sky horse.  
  
Every fin is flared as wide as you can make it, mood clear and threatening.  Your lusus responds by flashing its own fins wider and snorting, but when you don’t stop in your menacing march it gives ground and abandons the sofa.  Not without making all sorts of protesting noise of course.  He circles around and float-slithers to the doorway on the opposite side of the room and gives one last affronted whinny for good measure before disappearing.  
  
Karkat lets out a breath he apparently had been holding.  
  
“Ha, that was awesome.  My lusus is terrible about furniture.  I once had to get a chair and use it like a crowbar to lever him off.”  
  
“He’s just bein’ disagreeable on account a me leawin’ him behind this time,” you dismiss, though you maybe feel just a titch prideful over the compliment.  
  
You turn to help Karkat over to the seat, but he’s already limping past you.  You try not to feel disappointed by this.  
  
Why are you disappointed by this?  
  
He eases himself down onto the platform with a sigh and settles back into the cushions while you just stand there being distraught and over-all stupid.    
  
“So what sort of cinematic shlock have you dredged up for our viewing pleasure tonight?  And I’ll have you note that I use the term pleasure loosely.”  He’s looking at you expectantly and you feel like your brainesponge is melting.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
He rolls his eyes and says, “The movie, Eridan.”  
  
Movie.  Right, you did mention that some point, didn’t you.  The one you had in mind is still  wrapped up in the packaging it had been delivered in from Trollflix.  You go over to the shelf to retrieve it and look over the little blurb summary on the back.    
  
“It’s just a dumb historical drama,” you inform him.  “Nothin’ all that historically accurate about it, to be honest, just a bunch a special effects as a backdrop for their ower the top romance that newer actually happened in spite a bein’ ‘based on a true story’.  You’ll lowe it.”  
  
“I reserve my right to pass judgment,” he grumbles, but you’re sure it’s all bluster.  You pop the cinegrub into the player and return to the couch as the opening credits start to fade it over the music. Karkat is huddled to one side trying very hard to watch the screen and not you.  It’s a stinging reminder of what still been left unspoken, how much your knowing his dark secret is going to change things.  He looks exhausted, and he should really get something in him to make up for the blood loss, and you need something to distract yourself with before you go insane.  
  
“I know you said you weren't hungry, but you should probably eat somethin’,” you venture the suggestion.  He wrinkles his nose and that is far too adorable to be any amount of healthy for you.  
  
“Yeah, I guess I could eat.  Just, ugh, nothing meaty.”  That’s a fine enough direction to excuse yourself with.  You abscond wordlessly to the the small culinaryblock adjacent to the room before you can say something regrettable.  
  
You find this is where your lusus retreated to as well; he’s poking his snout in and out of a cabinet looking to see if there’s an unguarded morsel it can sneak.  He chuffs at you and drops his fins when you enter the room, expecting further admonishment, apparently.  It really wasn’t fair of you to take out your bad mood on him, and you know it.  Instead of getting scolded for scavenging, he gets a sympathetic pat on the head as you pass him by for the cupboards.  
  
It’s not really a proper culinaryblock, not like the galley a level down, but it’s got a thermal hull and few other small appliances plus a well stocked pantry.  It serves as your snack bar well when you don’t feel up to cooking a proper meal, which to be honest has been most of the time lately.  You find a packet of grubcorn easily. That’s always appropriate movie fair.  Karkat could really use some protein and sugar too, but his balking at meat could make that a difficult order to fill.    
  
After coming up empty for anything from the thermal hull beyond juice, you opt for a simple solution: a sandwich of crushed nutpaste and grubjelly.  It’s not fancy but it will do the work.  You toss the bag of grubcorn into the heating unit to cook and set about making the sandwich, trying to focus on nothing.  That doesn’t work well.  Spreading condiments on bread doesn’t take a lot of brain power and the nagging voice of worry you keep shoving back works its way up again.  The problem is...  
  
There are a lot of problems.  
  
Karkat is a freakblood and every loyalist synapse in your brain is screaming at you, telling you that you know what you have to do and putting it off is just going to make it worse, harder and more painful.  You’re so deeply flushed for him it aches, and that part of you rallies against every schoolfeeding you’ve ever absorbed on gene pool preservation until the back and forth war feels like it’s splitting your pan open.  Worse than either of those is not knowing if he could even feel the same way about you.  Anything you could say about it now will come off as blackmail, a proposition in exchange for keeping his secret.  He’d say yes whether or not he meant it.  
  
You don’t think you could live in a relationship like that.  Pushing and scrapping for love that isn’t there would bleed you both dry.  You went there once already, and the raw edges left over from that disaster still haven’t healed.     
  
You don’t realize that you’ve actually stopped prepping the food until the heating unit startles you out of your thoughts with a beep and makes you fumble the knife.  The clatter makes your lusus jump.  He floats over and pushes his nose under your elbow, snuffling in concern.    You wrap your arms around his neck and stroke his fins, more soothing to you than him.  
  
“What am I gonna do?” you moan into his scales.  He nickers softly and noses your shoulder but offers no other assurance.  Lusii are great for care and comfort, but in matters of quadrants you’re on your own.  Maybe if you hadn’t fucked up so spectacularly the first time, you might still have a moirail...  
  
But that’s a pointless trail to follow, and you’re only succeeding in making yourself feel worse.  
  
After you give the skyhorse a reassuring pat, you collect a new knife, a deep bowl for the grubcorn and tray to carry it all on and finish pulling together something to eat.  When you come back into the recreationblock, Karkat is nearly dozing off, staring at the screen droopy-eyed and blinking.  You set the tray down on a side table and offer him a sandwich half from it.  He looks surprised.  
  
“Holy shit, you made me a sandwich?”  You shrug as he takes it.  He seems more interested in examining it than eating it so you take the bowl of grubcorn, circle around to the other side of the couch to give him some space and settle it between you.    
  
“A grubjelly sandwich.  I haven’t had one of these since I was... four?  And you even cut it in fucking half.”  He sounds completely bewildered.  You’re not sure if you’ve done something wrong now.  Maybe he doesn’t like it?  
  
“I know it’s not really lawish an’ all but it should make you feel better an’ be easy to keep down,” you offer helpfully.  He laughs.  
  
“No this is great. I used to love these when I was little.  They were always hard for my lusus to make though.  Big claws aren’t exactly great for getting stuff out of little jars.”  He smiles a little wistfully and that makes your gills flutter.  
  
Turns out Karkat is hungrier that he had first thought.  After a couple of tentative nibbles he has the first sandwich half demolished in three bites and is starting in on the other.  He still keeps to his side of the couch, but he looks more relaxed than he had all night.  You try not to look at him while he’s eating, focusing on the movie instead.   The film is as melodramatic and over-acted as you thought it would be, but seeing the old battle cruisers rendered in such accurate and loving detail is thrilling.  
  
Snarking and riffing on the miserable excuse of a pale love triangle plot starts way too easy.  Once Karkat lets out a few sarcastic comments, you’re joining him.  It’s an easy back-and-forth to fall into, like an old habit, and feel some of the tension slow ease away.  This is safe and familiar, watching a dumb movie and joking around.  At some point he stopped clinging to the far end of the couch and started leaning more toward you.  Or possibly just closer to the bowl of grubcorn, but you’ll take small victories.  
  
During the inevitable red flip scene, you reach for another handful for kernels and brush into his hand doing the same.  Your heart does a spectacular little skip- it would be so easy, too easy, to just twine your fingers into his and squeeze, tell him the things you can’t force past your tongue for fear of bringing this wobbly shelter you’ve built back around your trust crashing down.  You snatch your hand away a little too quickly, and when he looks at you with a darkening expression you have to stumble out an excuse.  “You hawe the rest. You need it more than I do.”  
  
The rest of the movie passes well enough, even if there are little gaps of floundering conversation.  You can usually cover it up by feigning interest in a scene.  By the time the end credits start rolling up the screen he looks to be about nodding off again.    
  
“That was a complete travesty-,” he pause to let loose a jaw cracking yawn, “to the artistic media that is film.”  
  
You chuckle.  “You liked it.  You were gettin’ misty-oculared when the captain was confessin’ his black longin’ for his nawigator.”  
  
“Those were tears of pain, you idiotic shitsack.  Apparently one form of torture isn’t enough for me today.”  He’s smiling, corners of his mouth turned up just slightly is the typical Karkat way while he gripes at you.   You love that look.  He tries to stifle another yawn and only half succeeds.  “Fuck I think I need to go home and hibernate in some sopor for a week.”  
  
“Sure, a course,”  you start to agree- he does look like he needs the sleep- until you go to retrieve the movie from the player and spot the time on its interface.  “Oh, that might be a problem.”  
  
“What do you mean?” He’s back to being cagey, watching you like prey eyes a napping pouncebeast. Oh glubbing hell, Karkat thinks you did this on purpose. You shuffle under the glare and try not to look guilty, which probably has the opposite effect.    
  
“I’m an idiotic shitsack like you said an’ I didn’t check the time before making the movie suggestion.  I don’t think I can get us back to the other dock in time before sunrise.”  You wave a hand to the clock to illustrate.  He groans and drops his face into his hands, and your stomach plummets with it.  How can you be messing this up so bad at every turn?  
  
“I’m sorry, Kar, I really am.  I should’ve thought about how long the trip back would be an’-”  
  
“No, shut up,” he cuts you off.  Sighs deeply and shakes his head.  “You were just trying to be nice, don’t go throwing yourself off the boat over it.  I guess I’m just stuck here for the day.”  
  
“I ain’t got a spare recuperacoon set up, but you can use mine,” you offer, trying for helpful.   “Quality sopor will be good for you anyway, the additiwes will help your leg heal faster.”  
  
Karkat’s head comes up, and he peers at you from between his fingers.  “Where are you going to sleep?”  
  
“The couch here, most like.”  
  
“Without sopor?”  
  
You shrug.  Truth is you don’t think you’ll be doing much sleeping either way, but you don’t want to tell him that.  You say, “I’ll manage,” instead.  He looks dubious, but you persist, offering him a hand up.  
  
When he fits himself against your side, a movement that’s become natural over the space of a few hours, it feels so very right.  He’s small and warm, and you want to wrap yourself around him, rip apart anything that might think to come between you.  Except objectively you know that everything will, from within and without and you can’t, you just _can’t_.  
  
“Dammit, my lusus is going to kill me,” he laments.  
  
“I’ll get you back first thing in the ewenin’, I promise.”  
  
You hug him just a little bit tighter.  Only a little bit.  
  
The trek to your respiteblock is a harder one for all that the distance is actually shorter.  You had somehow forgotten that you had to go down a flight of stairs to reach it, the path was so routine that you never questioned it till now.  To navigate it with Karkat, you end up moving down a step first then helping him onto it while he leans against the railing.  By the time you reach the room he’s complaining.  Loudly.  
  
“Holy grubfuck let me just curl up and die already.”  
  
“You’re fine, look we’re already here.”  You deposit him in your desk chair then head over to your recuperacoon to make sure that its settings are right for him while he fusses.  He’s so amazingly warm that trying to tuck him into your normal seadweller chilled slime would be disastrous. You twist the dial on the heater till it’s resting just a bit shy of its highest setting.  Fiddling with the additives dispenser gives it a higher ratio of slime to thinner with an extra dose of antiseptic.  That should get him the rest he needs and start his leg on the mend too.  
  
The bandage has to come off.  It’s not water proof, and the gauze would just turn into a sloppy mess in the slime anyway.  Back beside him, you kneel and start unwrapping the covering.  He tenses in the seat, obviously expecting pain, but you’ve changed more than a few bandages.  You peel the gauze way carefully so that any spot bleeding that might have oozed through doesn’t pull at his skin, and you’re pleased to find that the glue is holding fine.  
  
“Giwe the ‘cupe a little bit to heat up before you tuck in and try to keep weight off that leg when you get up,” you inform him.  “That other door is a bathr- err ablutionblock, so you don’t hawe to go back up the stairs if you need to reliewe yourself or somethin’.”  
  
“Okay.”  He nods.  His eyes keep sliding away from you and towards your husktop.  “Do you mind if I, uh...”  
  
“No, that’s fine.  Let me sign myself out an’ you can sign in,” you say, and he looks relieved.  It’s a kick to chest to realize that he still doesn’t trust you, thinks that maybe you’re trying to trap him and keep him here.   Karkat isn’t stupid by half.  He knows full well what being the atrocity he is should get him, and he’s waiting for the culling fork to fall.  Giving him access to contact his friends online will hopefully alleviate that. There isn’t much else you can do to get his hackles down but give him space.  
  
You sign out of trollian then take a step back so he can pull the chair up.  He hunches over the keyboard and starts tapping away, and you move to the door to give him some privacy.  
  
“Good mornin’, Kar,” you say from the doorway before you leave.  
  
“You too.  Eridan?”  You hesitate, look back to see him giving you strangely earnest scrutiny.  You don’t know what he’s looking for, but he must find it somewhere because he breathes out a long sigh and says, “Thanks.”  
  
“Yeah.”  You can’t seem to get air past the tight knot in your throat.  You abscond.  
  
To pass the last couple of hours before sunrise, you take to dismantling and cleaning the Crosshairs.  It’s methodical work, and requires your full attention so as not to damage an irreplaceable part or blow a hole through your hive, or yourself for that matter.  Piece by piece, from smallest to largest you run the cloth and cleaning liquid over every fine detail, catalog any new scuffs or scratches before switching over to the polish and buffing them out.    
  
She’s gleaming by the time you’re done, a perfect show piece though you’d never dream of relegating something as formidable as Ahab’s Crosshairs to looking pretty on your mantle.  She’s an agent of death, the Handmaiden’s mistress.  When the final piece is clicked back into place and the housing screwed shut, she’s perfect and solid.  There’s a physical weight to the rifle of course, but more than that, there’s an indescribable weight of power, a heaviness gathered from each life you’ve claimed with a trigger pull.  Normally you bear it like a refinement, as much a part of your legacy as your fins or your blood, but tonight it leaves you weary, tired right through to your bones.  
  
You captchalogue the gun before you can dwell on that feeling for very long.  When you’ve swept your workspace clear and tidied away the brushes, bottles and rags, there’s nothing left to occupy you.  You could pull out some of your old rifles, maybe give them a polish, but you’re starting to feel twitchy, and that really wouldn’t be a good combination.  You end up back in the recreationblock, pacing from one end of the room to the other and trying very hard not to think about anything at all.  
  
It’s not working.  
  
Your mind keeps turning around in circles on itself, your inner tactician pouring over it with the same fervor that is usually reserved for the battle field.  It keeps coming to the same conclusions though, no matter how you try to run through the scenarios in your head.    
  
Option one: do your duty like you are supposed to and cull Karkat.  Lose him forever.  
  
Option two: confess your feelings to him.  He either doesn’t feel that way, or quadrants with you regardless as a form of protection either from yourself or others, or you do that thing you always do, where you cling too fucking hard and end up driving the people you care about away because you are a fuck up.  Lose him forever emotionally if not physically.  
  
It’s only when you taste the sharp salt bite of your own blood that you realize you’ve been chewing your lip ragged.  Your fins hurt from being pulled on too, a nervous habit you thought you’d kicked sweeps ago.  This is getting you nowhere, but your addled pan won’t quit.  
  
Another distraction is what you need.  
  
The only thing you can think of that will hold your attention without making you bleed through your ganderbulbs trying to work at it is zoning out on a visual stimulus.  You finally flop back into the couch cushions and tap the screen back on with a claw to the remote control’s power button.  There’s nothing on this time of day, of course.  It’s all just hour long advertisements for useless junk that’s just as like to kill you as it is to be convenient.  Watching the spectacular way the trolls on screen dramatically fuck up everyday tasks is at least entertaining.  You’re pretty sure that’s actual blood too.  
  
Your brain can tune out after a while.  Not shut down exactly, and you can’t turn off the looping track of what-if that nags incessantly, but you can push it to a space in the back where it won’t endlessly upset you.  The disembodied voice on the advertisement starts into a spiel, extolling the convenience and simplicity of their product and how less likely it is to kill you, and you let your eyes close, just for a minute.  
  
When you open them, it takes awhile for you to figure out that anything is amiss.  Thoughts come sluggish and fuzzed into your pan.  
  
The beach stretches out in all directions, no matter which way you turn, and though you can hear the crash of the surf on the shore you can’t see the water.   Everything is vast and directionless, the stars move too fast when you don’t look directly at them, but they’re frozen when you do in perfect repeating patterns that lack familiar constellations.  That’s okay; you forgot the names of them anyway.  
  
There are voids here and there where it’s nothing but murk, holes in the sky and, you notice after some observation, in the landscape itself too.  They shift and deform, skitter away or wink out existence entirely when your eyes land on them, crowd back in to follow you after you’ve turned away.  Except one.  
  
As you near it, the dark patch resolves into something more solid: a silhouette, one you know well when you can map out the wild spike of hair and the rounded nubs of horns.  He’s waiting for you.  You’re not sure how you know this, but he is, he’s been standing on this beach waiting just for you and that sets your blood pusher pounding as you pick up your pace.  It takes a frustrating amount of time to get near to him.  Despite a clear and open path, everything slides and bends around you to keep him just out of reach.   In a final push you lunge and seize his hand and he’s there right next to you, perfect and solid and Karkat, scowling faintly in that way that’s purely him and always makes you want to do better, try harder just to get the flicker of a smile instead.  
  
The ocean is louder here.  Sometimes it sounds like whispers instead of waves.  You think the tide is coming in from behind, and you have to speak up over it to be heard.  
  
“Karkat, I-  Fuck, I need to tell you...  See the thing is that I want to- oh, cod dammit, why does this have to be so fuckin’ hard!?”  
  
Words come tumbling out of your mouth, but you can’t piece them together right, it’s all a jumble.  It’s like there’s sand in your mouth, making every syllable heavy and choking so even in a stupid dreamscape you can’t speak the things you want to say to him.  In a wigglerish fit of frustration you scream and stomp your boot into the sand, and your construct Karkat continues to frown impassively.  But his fingers tighten around yours a fraction.  
  
Well then, if you can’t tell him, you’ll show him.  
  
Your free hand you bring to his face, cup his cheek and press your thumb briefly to his lips; they’re soft, alway slightly parted because of his fangs and present an irresistible temptation when you tip his head back.  Kissing him feels as right and natural as breathing.  
  
His seeking fingers tickle your neck as they thread through your hair, then he presses you closer, encouraging, and you happily comply.  When he opens up to you with a sigh it sends shivers trembling through your limbs and down your spine.  You could spend an eternity like this, tasting and exploring and claiming him as your own, over and over again, and never regret a moment of it.  
  
The roar of the water is growing louder.  It’s wrong.  For all that you want to devote everything to the troll in front of you, there’s something picking and tickling at your mind that’s unsettling.  There _are_ voices whispering under the rhythmic in-out of the tide, but as much as you try to strain your hearing you can’t make out what they’re saying.  It hurts to listen to.  
  
Karkat nips and tugs at your lip, drawing your attention back to him, and you blank out again, lost in him.  You have to push him away to catch your breath, but even that proves difficult because when you look at his eyes your air sacks freeze.  They’re red, filled with his blood.  Not just the normal colored in irises of age that he’ll have in less than a sweep but solid, startling crimson from one corner to the other.  As he stares at you, wide and unblinking, it starts to flow in little rivulets down his face, leaving bright stains behind.  
  
“Kar,” you gasp out, reach for his face again.  His mouth opens to reply-

  
 **_GLUB_ **

  
The sound is like standing in a bell tower while someone is ringing it, pressing in on your head from all sides till your brain case is creaking with the pressure.  Karkat gags and staggers onto you, scarlet now coursing from his ears and mouth.  
  
You shriek when the blood splatters against your chest, try to catch him as he slumps forward, but you’re knocked off balance from the force of the wave that slams into your knees. Your fingers flail and scrabble at his sweater, but you can’t seem to grasp it, they just slide right through the fabric and then he’s gone beneath the surface of the rising water.  
  
“Kar! Karkat, please, no! Fuck!”  
  
The next wave throws you from your feet-  
  
You’re jolted awake by the shock of landing on hard wood.  It leaves your elbow and hip smarting, and you spend an embarrassingly long moment trying to figure out which way is up as you flail on the floor.  Also, trying to not die of a coronary as you take a steadying breath and reign in your wildly galloping cardiac organ.  
  
It’s full day outside.  The solar tinting on your windows warps the color of the light, washing the room in sickly orange-yellow and causes everything to throw unfamiliar shadows.  For a barest moment you think you are still dreaming, that you’ve stumbled your way into a twisting, looping nightmare that won’t allow you to wake up, but the dull ache in your back from sleeping on the couch coupled with the sting of your bruised limbs helps ground you in reality.    
  
There’s a twisting ball of dread in your gastric sack that you can’t seem to push down.  Shutting your eyes does nothing to help it, in the dark of your mind all you can see is red, red, _red_ -  
  
You lurch to your feet with a gasp and stumble half blind for the stairs.  
  
Once you’re at the bottom of the steps and out of the disorienting light, you can pause to catch your breath and wait for your head to stop spinning.  In the comfort of the gloom, you feel incredibly stupid for charging halfway to your respiteblock just because you had a bad dream.  You aren’t a three sweep old runt who needs to go bawling for his lusus.  This is unbecoming.  You hesitate for a long moment torn between turning right back around and pressing forward.  In the end you still can’t shake the disquiet that clings to you, and you reason you might as well check to see if Karkat needs anything since you’re already down here.  
  
The room is even darker than the hall, and you need to wait for your eyes to adjust when you softly close the door behind you.  Your husktop’s gone dark in it’s sleep mode, unused for hours now.  Karkat is a motionless shape suspended in the sopor, and you approach him quietly.  Stripped down to his boxers, you can see he has more meat than you were expecting.  He spends so much time wrapped in bulky, covering clothing it had been easy to assume that those were what made up most of the little size he has.  There’s still youth softness around his middle, but if he keeps up the work with his sickles it won’t last past the next sweep.  He’s so peaceful in sleep, the lines of his face are smoothed out and he looks-  
  
Oh god, he looks-  
  
Irrational panic drives you to your knees beside the recuperacoon, and you reach out a shaking hand to hover over his mouth.  Soft breath tickles your palm and all at once the tension snaps and bleeds out of you.  He’s safe and warm and alive, perfectly fine in your hive.  And he’s going to stay that way.  It would be so easy to cull him gently now: all you would have to do is change the settings on the ‘coon so it stopped adding thinner to the sopor.  He simply just wouldn’t wake up come evening, and he’d never have to feel the terror or pain or betrayal, but you know that you won’t- can’t.  You’ve sunk yourself too deep into loving him without even knowing it was happening.  
  
There’s a clump of hair plastered to his forehead by the slime, and you don’t even think about it when you move to brush it away.  He stirs, murmurs something unintelligible, and you freeze, heart in your protein chute and hand still hovering over him, when he cracks his eyes open and blinks blearily up at you.  
  
“Ampora, what the fuck,” he croaks, voice thick with sleep then adds, “you look like hell.”  
  
You belatedly withdraw the offending hand and duck your head away.  “Sorry, Kar, didn’t mean to wake you.  I couldn’t sleep an’ now I’m just bein’ dumb.”  
  
He grabs the edge of the recuperacoon and pulls himself up to prop his elbows on the edge before he honestly asks, “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothin’.  It’s stupid.  I’m gonna go-” the soft pap against your cheek startles you.  He leaves his hand resting there for a moment too long, and you find yourself leaning into his touch.  
  
“I’m already awake now, asswipe, so out with it.”  
  
Your cheeks heat.  It feels like such a stupid thing now, why were you even so hysterical in the first place?  He sits there, patient and expectant, and you feel like you’re confessing to being the one to eat the last cookie, not pouring your heart out.  
  
“Was just a daymare.”  
  
He actually looks sympathetic.  “What about?”  
  
“I... I think I fucked somethin’ up.  Gl'bgolyb glubbed an’... people died.”  You can’t bring yourself to say that it was _him_ that died, that you were almost certain that it was something you had done that had killed him.  His mouth quirks in a fleeting smile.  
  
“Thought you wanted to kill all us land dwellers anyway,” he teases.  You cough.  
  
“Well, not _all_ a you, I... like you.”  You feel the weight of his eyes on you and quickly amend, “Kan’s okay, too, I guess.  Maybe Vriska.”  
  
“Oh how very benevolent of you to spare us land folk of your wrath.”  
  
“Shut up,” you grouse.  He’s too close to poking holes in your defenses, and the sleep roughness of his voice is doing things to your lower regions that you really don’t want to let on.  You need a fast excuse.  “I told you it was dumb.”  
  
“It’s not dumb when it gets into your head like that,” he says so gently that you want to believe him.    
  
“Thanks,” you say weakly.  He grunts, too tired to make a worded reply, but you think it was a positive sound.  His hand is still pressed to your cheek, and you’re startled to realize it’s because you’ve pinned it there with your own.  He’s started rubbing circles into your temple with his thumb, and it feels wonderful but if you linger you’re going to cross a line you’ll regret.  Maybe you already have.  
  
Carefully you peel his hand away and tuck it back to his chest before pushing yourself to your feet.  Your shins ache from the extended stay on the floor.  
  
“Sorry I woke you up.  Go back to sleep.”  
  
“You going to be okay?”  He’s sincere even through the fog of sleep that’s trying to pull him back under, and you didn’t think he could shatter you again but he keeps doing it.  Now you don’t think he’ll stop.    
  
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.  Good mornin’, Kar.”  
  
“Morning,” he mumbles after you as you elegantly flee your own respiteblock for the second time today.  
  
On your way back to the loungeblock you come to a conclusion.  There’s a third option you never considered.  Rather than destroy what you have, you can keep him as he is.  Karkat cares about you just as you are, and you think you might be able to live with that.  You won’t talk about this night, and he’ll be yours for as long as he remains, even if it’s not exactly as you want him.  It’s better than nothing.  There’s a part of you that wants to weep at that, to throw itself against the walls and scream until it claws its way out to be sated but you firmly shove it down.    
  
You slide back into the reclining platform and end up sprawled across the cushions with your face pressed into the back to drown out the light.  Everything inside you aches with loss, mourning over something you never had in the first place.  You’re aching other places too, needy and wanting, with too much fuel for your imagination from that brief encounter.   When you try the change position and feel the slick heat building between your legs you have to choke down a whimper.  
  
Fuck it, even if you can’t have him for real, you can in your dreams, and maybe a little stress relief will keep the day terrors way.  
  
You exhale a sigh once you have your pants shoved down past your hips, take in a sharp breath when your fingers brush against the damp mess your nook is fast becoming.  Your bulge is still mostly sheathed at the start, but it doesn’t take much prompting for it to come out.  You move to touch every inch of yourself, slow and teasing, picturing him pressed up behind you, that it’s his hands wandering over your body and drawing out each hitch and moan and stuttering inhale.    
  
You nearly startle yourself when the next sound out of your throat is a soft mating trill.  You can’t stop it, or the next one on it’s heels and you end up smothering the sound into your arm.  Hot tears prick at the corners of your eyes and the hollow pain under your sternum grows every time they go unanswered.  This becomes punishment as much as it is release almost more then you can stand but you won’t stop.    
  
You don’t care.  You take this forever if it means he’s still there every night.


	3. A Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic finally earns it's E rating, be fore warned.

Eridan is not okay.  Even while still sleep-heavy and sopor-drugged, you are not stupid enough to believe him.  He’d looked fucking haunted, like whatever he had dreamed up in his sleep had followed him up into the waking world to stalk him.  You’ve had dreams like that.  Raw, awful daymares that fester without fading even after hours have gone by.  Worse, he seemed to only get more flustered when you tried to soothe it away.  Folded in and redoubled his defenses, and it felt like all the little gestures he’d made to accept you were nothing.  
  
That hurts more than it should have.  You have no right expecting him to come to terms with your... unique condition within the scope of one night and a movie, or at all really.  
  
In your addled state, you’d almost suggested he climb in with you- god knows his recuperacoon is big enough for you both to fit- but he’d left too quickly.  
  
The heat of the sopor is lulling, tempting you back under.  He wasn’t even half-bragging about the quality, not that you doubted him; with a violet blood’s budget he can afford the best shit on the market.  With the diluents level lowered, you think there’s enough tranquilizing chemical in you to carry you through the rest of the day, especially given what you’re normally used to.  It’s only with a strained effort that you manage to lever you way out of the ‘coon and stand, wobbly and dripping, intent on fetching the seadweller and dragging him back if you have to.  Propriety or whatever the fuck code of hosting he’s following be damned, that asshole needs a good rest in warm slime more than you do.  
  
First thing though, you need to towel off.  You don’t think it would be a wise idea to test Eridan’s unusually generous state by tracking sopor through his hive.  
  
You’ve mostly stumbled your way to the ablutionblock before you remember you aren’t supposed to be putting weight on your leg.  God damn, whatever is in this stuff is good because you can hardly feel any pain.  It’s more like a distant sensation that you know _should_ be hurting and likely will hurt once this wears off, but for right now it’s just background noise.  You limp carefully the rest of the way despite it.  Ripping open the wound and resuming bleeding on everything would not help your endeavor at all.  
  
Inside this room it feels far more lived in than the block where Eridan had first treated your wound.  There’s honest-to-god clutter on the counters: lotions and gels, soap that’s a properly usable shape instead of some fancy sea life, some fiddly appliance thing that you think is for hair, but hell if you know how to use it.  He even has a spare pair of glasses sitting on the counter.  It smells like him in here: like what he puts in his hair to get it to stay the way it does and whatever it is that he washes with.  It’s weirdly comforting.  
  
You find a stack of towels in the third cabinet you open and proceed to wipe down.  Some of the sopor has already started drying and sticking in patches but not enough to leave you feeling too gross.  A quick rinse under the sink faucet is enough to free your hair of residue, and you dampen the towel while you’re at it to help pull off the more stubborn spots.  It’s not a full scrub down, but it’s enough to keep from making a sticky mess of the furniture. You don’t bother with dressing.  Too much effort.  The pants are still a complete loss anyway, and Eridan has already seen your underwear once tonight; it’s not going to blind his virgin eyes to see you again.  If they even are virgin.    
  
Why are you thinking about that?  And why does the thought of his eyes and hands on someone else make you feel so hot and fiercely possessive?  
  
You shake your head, trying to clear away the fog, and make your way slowly to the door.  It’s a short walk down the hall to the bottom of the stairs, but a long, careful climb to the top and once you’ve mounted that obstacle, you have to pause on the landing and lean against the wall to rest.    
  
You only just catch the first muffled sob from the other room over the harshness of your own panting breath, and it kicks you in the chest.  
  
Moving more quietly, you press forward, careful for fear of startling your friend and catching him in a vulnerable moment, even though impulse says go to him, rescue him.  Another broken sound stops you in your tracks just before you leave the entry way.  It’s just a little bit different-  
  
A smothered moan makes you heat to your ear tips; you think you might have gotten the wrong idea about was bothering Eridan so badly.  This is great.  Try to go play the long suffering hero, and you end up the intruding creeper.  
  
Now you’re trapped between trying to fight your way back down the stairs- seriously, fuck those stairs, who thought it would be a great idea to put them there, anyway- and making an even bigger ass of yourself than you have in the past twenty-four hours by walking in on the fish troll fondling himself.  It’s like the universe has conspired to dump every piece of terrible karmic hoofbeast shit you ever saved up on you in one grand gesture of Fuck Off, Karkat Vantas.  Clearly the reason you’d been spared the dignity of a fast culling was so you could die a slow, torturous death of humiliation.    
  
How about an order of sexual frustration to go with it?  Sure why not- your body seems to agree wholeheartedly with the idea.  The little noises of pleasure that manage to escape Eridan go straight down to your gut and make nook throb hungrily.  He sounds amazing, and you’re starting to feel like a voyeuristic piece of shit on top of everything else.  Right, stairs it is then.  
  
“Kar!”  The sharp gasp of your name pins you in place just as you were about to turn and leave, and you try to clamp down on a startled squeak.  You don’t hear him move, though.  He doesn’t come to confront you for being a lurking perv, and when he makes another breathless moan you’re too nervous to make another attempt to retreat.  Cautiously, you lean through the archway and peer into his loungeblock.  
  
Where you find Eridan is curled on his reclining platform, face pressed to the cushions of the backrest.  There’s no way he could have seen or heard you lurking in the the hall- he’s too distracted, and not looking up anyway so that means he-  
  
Oh god... oh god, oh _shit_ \- he’s getting himself off to thoughts of _you_!  
  
You suppress the whine that tries to claw its way out of your throat when he gasps and twitches his hips forward- bare that you can see from your vantage spot, just the smallest slip of skin unwrapped and exposed so you can see the curve of his bone- as it drives a spike of arousal straight through you.  Your bulge is tight in its sheath, and there is no act of willpower left that’s going to stop it from emerging.  The action still feels like a betrayal, but when it slides out flushed and seeking, you slip a hand beneath the waistband of your boxers and let your coils twine through your fingers.  Eridan hiccups and jerks, and you stroke yourself from tip to root with a shudder, rolling in sync with him from all the way across the room.  
  
He’s a mess, twisted up for you when you didn’t even technically need to be in the same room, and that’s such a heady rush it makes you dizzy.  He’s fantasizing over you of all trolls. That one undersized, nubby-horned, asshole mutant could get a privileged seadweller so bothered is thrilling.  He’s so far up the scale that you aren’t even using the same measurements anymore, but he wants you anyway.  Wants, but didn’t take, even though he could have, without any fear of repercussion, and you haven’t a clue why unless he’s ashamed or...  
  
Then the first notes of a mating trill choked off in a whimper drop understanding on you like a hammer.  Fuck you for being a fool, this boy wants you as more than just meat, it should have been obvious!  The shy glances and shutting down when you tried to get the price of his silence- you were waiting for something to come unhinged and finally change, but why not this?    
  
Look at him, he’s wrecked over you.  Actually wants you quadranted but he’s so mired in his own fear he’d rather hide away and take from his imagination than have just fucking asked.  That stupid, piteous, melodramatic prince, he-  
  
Your heart supernovas into a radiant ball that floods into everything.  He is pitiful and hopeless for all that he’s also powerful and terrifying, and he’s yours.  Has been for longer than either of you realized, from every time he left a little piece of himself open, fragile and defenseless for you to tuck away till you had hoarded everything.  Now you have too much to give back and you want to claim the rest.  
  
When he cries out again, your own deeper, more ragged call rises up to meet it with little consent on your part, but it’s a lost cause fighting against this.  Eridan jolts and goes perfectly rigid when he hears it.  Shit, no hiding now, you’re in for it.  You step carefully around the corner and into full view of him, probably looking like a sleep disheveled nightmare, and a debauched one at that since you bulge is still stubbornly tangled with your hand.  
  
“Hi." You rasp about the the most pan searingly asinine thing to pop into your mouth then immediately want to turn around and bang your head into the wall.  
  
He squeaks, “Kar,” in the tiniest voice you’ve ever heard him use then, because you’re not the only one vocabulary has decided to abandon, he says, “hi,” right back before he tries to flounder into sitting up right.  He seems to be having his own trouble with excitable anatomy because he still stays curled away from you, trying to hide the hand that’s disappeared below the open fly of his pants.  
  
The shielded daylight tints everything weird, but you can still see the color that’s flushing in his cheeks and right out to his fins from where you’re standing; paired with the mess his normally teased locks have become and his pants hanging down off his hips just low enough to drink in the sight of skin and nothing more, he’s amazingly beautiful in an unpolished way you’ve never seen before.  It’s an effort already to free yourself from your tendril, and that doesn’t make it any easier to do.  Once you have your hand back you walk slowly to the seat, giving him time to stop you, tell you off for being so invasive, but he draws up instead and squishes into one side of the platform to give you room.  
  
“This- uh... I-”  He trips over half formed sentences and tries to piece together an excuse and an apology before abandoning both when you sit beside him, not at the other end of the furniture but close in his space.  Just enough be present, not enough to crowd him if he changes his mind.    You take in a shuddering breath, try to settle the nerves that are singing and jittery, making you feel like shaking apart at the seams.  
  
“You were just going to hide on the couch all day like this?”    
  
“Didn’t think you’d be interested,” the little depreciative smile he gives himself at that twists under your sternum, nice and sharp.  
  
“I’m interested,” you say.  His eyes, already stupid big under his glasses, go wide and he says, “Oh,” very quietly.  There’s a half beat after that where neither of you dare to move or even breath too hard.  You just basically gave him permission but he’s still not making a move.  
  
Fuck it, there’s no guide for this, you just have to go for it.  
  
“So... yeah.  This is a thing that’s happening,” your words still try to fail you but elegance is moot by this point.  
  
“It is,” he agrees, then backtracks, “I mean, yeah if that... is this okay?”  
  
“Yeah, if you want it to be.”  
  
“Yes,” he agrees instantly then winces at his own enthusiasm.  He curls in on himself further, like he’s afraid that trying to do anything else will chase you off, and the painful knot of him and his insecurity twists you up.  You’re starting to piece together just how much you pity him now that you can put the name on the feeling that lodges like a bur in your chest.  It’s this thing that makes you want to wrap around him and draw him in until he’s a breathing, beating part of you.  
  
You start with his hand first, picking it up and examining where he had his knuckles clenched in his abysmally sharp teeth and left them torn.  You bring them to your lips and plant a slow, lingering kiss over each one, then lave them clean with the tip of your tongue.  He takes in quick little sniffs every time you move to the next cut, but he doesn’t pull back or protest, just watches you intense and wondering as you work.  When the last knuckle is clean of his blood you move to his face, hesitate before leaning in and licking at the wound he chewed in his lip.     
  
His eyes flutter closed at the contact, and he goes motionless- even his breath comes shallow, like he’s afraid that moving with shatter something, but when you cup the back of head he sighs.  Your tongue darts forward into the offered opening.  A shudder seizes your spine, as you flick over his fangs, steal a touch to the cool roof of his mouth then pull back, and it’s mirrored in him too, echos back again when he whines a note of loss and checks his attempt to follow your retreat.  
  
He wants this so much, but he won’t just take it, and you have no idea what you’re doing, and it’s driving you mad.  Fingers that were playing with his hair tighten in frustration and he gasps and you surge forward again.  
  
He should be the one claiming you.  He’s royal violet and more important and in every media tradition you’ve ever seen, it’s the higher blooded of the two that initiates a flushed consummation.  But you know this stupid boy inside and out, you know he’ll sit on his emotions and strangle them until the pressure exceeds his control and blows everything to irretrievable bits- you aren’t waiting for that.  
  
Eridan meets you, hungry and seeking this time, when you close your mouth to his.  You spend a long moment just trading lazy kisses.  He’s cool against your lips and tongue- which was expected but it’s pleasant, which wasn’t- and slightly salty, like a faint reminder the waters he was raised in.  You didn’t think the taste of him could become an addiction in such a short amount of time, but you find it hard to pull away.  Your nose keeps bumping against his glasses, knocking them crooked.  
  
A tickle of cold fingertips against your side startles you enough to make to make you flinch, and he snatches his venturing hand back like you scalded him.  You barely choke off the rumble growing in you squawkblister before it turns into a full-throated growl.  
  
“Dammit!  Do you want to do this, or not?”  You can’t stop the rise in your pitch.  Though you aren’t in full shriek mode yet, it’s never taken much to push those buttons, and you swear the growing heat between your thighs is going to kill you if something doesn’t fucking happen soon.  He responds by shifting lower on the couch so he’s nearly laying flat instead of totally huddled to the arm.  
  
“What do you think?” he nearly purrs and rolls his hips up at the same time, directing your attention to the open fly of his too-tight jeans and his curling bulge, flushed and brilliant purple as it peeks out.  Your throat goes tight.  
  
“Then... then _do_ something about it,” you still manage to stumble out.  
  
His purr turns to a growl, and you’re having trouble swallowing from the look he pins you with.  For an instant he’s all seadweller danger and predator sharp and holy assfuck, why does that turn you on so badly?  
  
“Don’t you think- Fuck, Kar, I...” He rakes his claws through his hair and ends up tugging at the end of his facial fins with with a hiss.  “You don’t know what I want to do to you.”  
  
You try hard not to let your voice waver when you say, “Tell me.”  
  
“I want you make you mine, Kar.  I want it so no one else can hawe you.”  His hands, both of them now, come back up to your sides and brush taunting circles just below your grub scars.  When he pokes at the split in his lip with his tongue, you have to try very hard not to dive for it because you want him to keep going.  “I... god I want to own you and lock you away because if the rest a the world found you, they’d take you from me.  But the thing a that is, it’d kill you all the same, wouldn’t it?  Not in physical sense, but in spirit.”  He hiccups like he’s trying to hold something back and finishes.  “You’ll hate me an’ I’ll lose you anyway.”  
  
His claws prick your skin unexpectedly as the gentle touch morphs into a possessive grip, and you gasp.  There hasn’t been nearly enough stimulation yet, but every inch of you is over-sensitive and touch hungry, and even that little sting makes every muscle below your waist clench tight in anticipation.  Eridan is eying you with a heart wrenching mix of one large part open desire and smaller doses of fear and hope all swirled up around you, waiting for whatever you’re going to do next.  You lean forward over him, pluck off his dumb glasses (there’s moisture on the inside of the lenses which you pretend not to notice) and set them carefully on the side table behind him before taking his face in your hands.  
  
“Listen to me carefully, nookwhiff, because I’m only going to say this once.”  You take a deep breath, try to ignore all the rest of the sensory input crowding in, clamoring for your attention, and start speaking slowly.  “You aren’t the only half of this equation, and if I don’t like what you’re doing, I am going to tell you to fuck right the hell off.  I want this.  I’ve been trusting you with everything since last night, and now I need you do the same for me, okay?”  You wait a half beat for your words to settle in, let him decide what he actually wants to do before he nods once.  
  
“Okay... okay, yes I... I can do that.”    
  
“Good.”  You lean forward, reward him with another kiss, and this time he moves too.  He shifts his grip from your ribs to your hips and the slide of cold flesh against your heated skin makes you chill all over.  He opens beneath you like something in bloom.  Tongues meet and slide, not fighting for control but going a languid back and forth trade, and a moment later he changes his hold again to haul you up till you’re settled more firmly between his legs.  The new press of his body has your bulge coiling in circles, instinctively seeking a place to bury itself within him.  The pressure feels so good, but it isn’t nearly enough.  You can’t resist slowly rolling your hips against him as you grow more desperate, and he whimpers at that.  
  
Merciful fucking god, you are a mess.  Your boxers are an uncomfortable cloth trap to your flushed anatomy and soaked through besides, so you detach a hand to try and wrestle them off.  It’s not an easy task but thankfully it doesn’t take much of a hint for Eridan to figure out what you’re trying to do.  He works his fingers under the elastic and helps you slide the underwear down.  You have to sit back to take it the rest of the way off, moving careful and slow over the wounded leg so you don’t disturb it.  The result is an unintentional show, Eridan’s eyes never leaving you as you twist and wiggle free.  He licks at his lip again when you’re bare and swallows.  
  
Only then it occurs to you that he’s probably in a very similar state, with his jeans only half way off his hips and nearly everything still covered.  You should be feeling self conscious being completely naked in front of a troll that’s still mostly clothed, but instead it’s exhilarating.  His attention is undivided and when you stroke a palm over your restless bulge he lets out the softest little croon.  That’s it, his pants are coming off.  Now.  
  
You reach down, tug at the hem, and he complies to the prompt, lifting his ass of the couch so you can pull the clothes down his legs, pants and underwear together, then unceremoniously discard them on the floor.  He’s sloppy with his own fluids, thighs smeared in lurid violet, and his nook is swollen.  It would be so easy to give in to temptation and take him just like this.  From the way he holds on to each breath in anticipation, you don’t think he’d mind either, but you want more, you want to see all of him.  His shirt is next and he follows along with that pretty easily too, lifting his arms when you push his sweater up to his chest.  
  
Once it’s joined the growing pile on the floor you sit back again to drink in the sight of him.  He’s so very different from your own familiar body that you want to explore every inch and make a mental catalog.  You wonder where Eridan would like being touched most and decide that you’re going to have fun finding out.    
  
It starts with the obvious, he’s thinner and longer than you are, through his torso and limbs and even his restless bulge.  He’s toned all over but not bulky; it’s a swimmer’s physique, though you can’t recall him spending much time at all in the water.  He has to do some swimming though, there aren’t many ways to get a form like his without it.  His grub scars are thinner and higher up than yours because just below them are his gills, covers closed tight in the absence of water.  They’re so alien to you, something completely foreign, and you’re suddenly struck with a bizarre urge.  
  
“Can I... is it okay if I touch them?” you ask, gesturing to the slits in his sides.  He looks uncertain for a second but then he nods.  
  
“Yeah, just be careful.”  
  
Haha, right.  Careful.  It’s only his exposed insides, no fucking pressure or anything.  You really hope you aren’t about to screw this up and reach down to run the pad of your thumb over the seam of flesh.  He tenses, but it seems more reflexive than actually in response to anything he might be feeling, and he’s relaxing back into the cushions a moment later.  That’s an encouraging sign, so far.  Time to try the next phase.  
  
Bracing one hand against his chest and other on his thigh, you lean down and suck along the same path your thumb just took.  Under your mouth, the cover responds to the wet tail and parts open, exposing the delicate structure beneath.  Eridan sucks in, swallows, and his gills flutter in response.  They’re strangely entrancing to watch move, when you finish the first pass and can sit back again to admire them.  When you return to them, you try a different approach, tucking your tongue under the edge of the cover and licking along the inside.  
  
The keen he makes at that is gorgeous.  He arches under you, tossing his head back until the points of his horns are digging into the fabric of the couch arm, and grips your ass tightly.  You want to make him do that again.  
  
You’re too distracted by the way he’s bending so beautifully under your touch to notice one of his hands leaves its place till you feel the cool pressure of his thumb rub over the curve of your horn.  The shock halts your exploration and makes you strangle out an embarrassing sound.  Stupid, nubby horns have never been very sensitive before, at least not when you tried experimenting with yourself.  They’re too compact, the topmost band where it’s supposed to contain the majority of a trolls environmental receptors is hardly a band at all, but when Eridan’s fingertips stroke down to the base to scratch light circles in the horn bed with his nails then back up again, it has you melting into a quivering puddle in no time flat.    
  
It’s not even the touch so much as the sharp contrast of cold to warmth that does you in.  He’s like a cool washcloth, just far enough off your baseline temperature to be pleasant.  He chuckles low in his chest where the sound rumbles through your cheek and does it again.  
  
“You really like that, huh?”  You try and fail to form a coherent response to his question.  It’s not for lack of understanding, you just can’t get your throat to work right and all that comes out is a desperate coo.  Instead you push your head against his hand as encouragement.  He makes a curious hum and then his fingers leave, baffling you for a moment until you feel him lean forward and-  
  
“Ahh-hn!”  The sound escapes you when he surrounds the stub with his lips and tongue, swirling and sucking around the curve and sending a bolt straight into your brain.  Everything blanks out for a second or three, and when the stimulation overload lets up you’re shaking and panting hard.  
  
“Mother _fucker_ ,” you snarl.  He laughs again.  
  
“Splish for splash, lowe,” he tells you.   His voice doesn’t sound much steadier than you’re feeling.  
  
“Is that so?”  You grin at him then, try to put as much menacing promise into it as you can in spite of your uselessly blunt fangs, and he catches on just before you curl your fist around his bulge and squeeze.  And you thought the sound he made before was nice.  
  
The sea troll is not distracted enough to go back on his word, though.  His fingers encircle your squirming tendril, make you jump and shudder at the chill touch, and start stroking and squeezing back.  His other hand presses flat against your butt and encourages you to lean into him.  The rhythm you fall into together is fast and desperate; you can feel your bulge growing hot and heavy, and the way he squirms and trills beneath you is working you up faster than you want.  
  
You feel like you’re going to fly apart at any moment if you don’t stop, and that’s not what you want.  You need him in every intimate way you can take him, and you think you might just have to go find a dark corner to curl up and die in if you get finished off by some fondling.  Oh god, but the way he spreads himself before you is too fucking much- you bite the inside of your cheek- hard- to snap yourself back from the edge.  
  
“Stop,” you manage to croak the plea.  He blinks nervously up at you as he takes his hands away.  
  
“Did I do somethin’ wrong?”  Those eyes couldn’t get any bigger if he tried.  In this moment, if you say something wrong, you could break him, and the pulse of bone deep pity that realization gives you is almost enough to render you speechless.  If you say nothing at all, you might still break him anyway, so you rest your forehead to his and croon to him softly.  
  
“No, you’re fine, you’re good.  We’re good, but I want to... I didn’t want it to end so quick.”  The words come out in a flow of babble, and you can’t stop your heart rate from jumping.  There hasn’t been anything more amazing to you in your life than everything he’s making you feel, and that’s frightening and exhilarating all at once.  If you can make him feel even half of it in return, every dump your life has taken on you would be worth it.  
  
“I want to make you feel good,” you murmur against his lips, and it earns you a squeak from him.  
  
“You already hawe.”  
  
“More.  God fucking damn it, Eridan, I pity you so much, and I want to show you.”  It sounds so damn cheesy when you say it out loud, like you stole the line right out of one of your moirail’s trashy, rainbow drinker themed thoracic-garment rippers, but the way his breath catches tells you it’s working anyway.    
  
“You want to- oh, god, right now?”  His bloodpusher is thundering just as fast as yours, you can feel it under your fingertips.  
  
“Yeah.  Fuck yes, if it’s still okay.”  
  
He nods, bumping your nose with his.  “Yes, Kar that’s... that’s more than okay.  _Please_ , yes!”  You were wrong about his eyes.  
  
“Good.  Okay then.  Uh...” You blush mutant scarlet as your thought process suddenly comes to a stuttering halt.  Shitfuckshitshitfuck, damn your stupid whore mouth and your overeager libido, you have only the most basic clue of what you’re doing, and now you get to bumble around your first time while trying to make this romantic.  You are a rot-sponged loser, and this is going to go spectacularly wrong, but maybe he pities you enough in return to not mind.  He seemed to like what you’ve tried so far, anyway.  
  
Eridan notices your hesitation again and asks, “What is it?”  There isn’t a very good way to smooth it over; if you lie he’ll probably figure it out pretty fast.  
  
“I’m, uh, not actually sure where to start.” You sit up again and scratch nervously at your neck as you talk.  “I mean, fuck, I’m not completely clueless, there’s biology schoolfeedings and Pailtube and shit, but I... I’ve never actually done this.”  Once the admission is out, you can relax as some of the weight of performance pressure slips off of you.  
  
Eridan hits you by surprise when he says, “That’s fine, neither hawe I.”  
  
“But,” your confusion makes you blurt, “what about that black thing you had with Vriska?”  
  
“We newer actually got that far.”  The confession looks like it stings him, but that only makes you pine for him more.  Your hands find his, and you tug at him till he’s sitting up with you, and you can wrap your arms around his chest.  His come around you too, one arm draped around your shoulder and the other settles a hand on your hip.  
  
“We can figure this out together, then,” you assure him and squeeze.  He sighs and nuzzles into the surly mop of your hair, right between your horns.    
  
Where you rest your head just under his chin you can smell the dense pool of his pheromones on his skin, the pure chemical expression of _him_ , and instinct seizes you with purpose.  He’s yours, and you’re going to make that a blatant statement of fact in every expression you know how.  You move your head till you rest cheek to cheek then rub the line of your chin down his and keep going till you move to his neck and a shoulder.  Pulling back and inhaling again gets you purring; the perfect cocktail of your combined scent blankets your brain at the same time as your groin.  
  
He’s doing the same thing, sniffing at the trail of himself on you and rasping a hungry sound that buzzes through your skin.  It pulses through your center, setting everything on fire and making you ache.  When he gets his hands under your thighs and drags you up against him, you go without protest.  He’s careful for your injured limb as he helps you settle into his lap.  That one gets draped over his leg and his other leg you catch under the knee and bring up till it’s hooked over your hip.  
  
You bulges tangle with each other when they come flushed together and you have to bite back a hiss.  Eridan holds no such restraint, chirruping right into your ear and rocking hard till the seams of your swollen nooks press and slide wetly.  You’re equal parts molten and frozen as the conflicting body temperatures fizzle through the most sensitive part of you.  He’s so wet and ready and _there_ , you want nothing else.  You have to grab at the tangling coils before your body can act on its own.  
  
Trying to get your voice to work is like wading through mud as you try to speak around the mating song that’s climbing up your vocal cords, but you manage it.  
  
“Ready?”  
  
He nods, a wavering call already stealing his words away.  It’s all you need to nudge the tip of your bulge down.  The rest it does with little guidance.  You find the dripping entrance of him and push inside as you let your song go for him.  It’s low and raspy compared to his higher lilt, a perfect compliment the same way you are hot to his cold.  He swallows you slowly, an inch at a time and it’s rapture and torture at once.  
  
Holy fuck, no one had ever described it like _this_!  His nook is so tight, your bulge gives a half twist and a ripple, trying to drive up into him all at once.  His notes stutter at that and his claws knead the flesh of your thighs.  
  
“S-slo oooh...”  He tries to string together a word but fails.  You hope you’re not hurting him- oh god, you _really_ hope you’re not, because you couldn’t slow down now if you wanted to.  You’re near to being fully sheathed inside him when you feel the tip of his own bulge prodding up against you.  You tilt your hips, try to open yourself for him and the fish troll wastes no time spreading you around his length.  The stretch stings but his coolness soothes at the same time and the feeling of being both wrapped in him and full of him is right, it’s exactly what you were missing.  
  
Eridan is hitching and warbling all over the place as he starts to rock in slow circles with you. Every place you touch each other, the temperature starts to even out as you melt him and he cools you.  Your arms come back around him, and you hide your face against his chest while trying to breath steady and deep.  That’s not working very well.  Each breath keeping getting interrupted by the rolling hum of your flushed song.  You were already so close to your limit once, and now you’re rushing to meet it again, and your lovely mess of a prince doesn’t show any desire to slow down either.  His bulge eels and coils, and every now and again he gasps and thrashes inside you, and you are helpless for it.  
  
At the very least you can give as good as you’re getting.  His nook ripples around you mercilessly and draws you down until you slide under the firm wall of his seedflap.  He’s shaking by now.  He’s clinging to you like he’ll drown if he lets go, and he tries to muffle his cries into your hair.  It does nothing but seemingly channel the sound straight into your pan and right through to your gut where it pools in fire.  There’s a hot pressure growing in your pelvis, and every sound and movement he makes collects right there till you’re so full it’s almost painful.  You move inside him once more, and he trills and jerks, whips deep inside you in return, and you’re finished.  
  
You come with a shudder, nearly sobbing with relief as you spill your genetic material into him.  His whine takes on such a desperate needy tone as his nook flutters and squeezes like it’s trying to milk you.  Then the first cold splash from his own orgasm sets off a new wave of pleasure, this time from your clenching nook, that shuts every other synapse down.  You keen high and loud and crush yourself to him as you get lost in the push and pull, the overpowering ebb and flow of each other until there’s nothing else.  There was never two trolls here, there’s only the one, joined and whole and full.  
  
You don’t know how long it takes you to be able to string a reasonably coherent thought together, but by the time you do you’ve both collapse into a tangle huddle of limbs recline on the cushions.  Everything between your legs feels sore, but in an strange, pleasant way, though the drying overflow of muddled slurry that’s spilled down your thighs is tacky and uncomfortable.  You’re both panting and shaking, curled around each other like you’re trying to keep the other from coming apart.  You are wet and cold and utter wrung out, and you couldn’t feel happier if you tried.  
  
“Damn,” you manage.  
  
“Yeah,” Eridan agrees, still sounding dazed, and you can’t help an exhausted laugh.  
  
“I don’t suppose you actually have a bucket on you.”  The press of your full genetic material bladder isn’t really unpleasant right now, but you don’t think staying like this for the rest of the day would be such a good idea.  Eridan snorts.  
  
“No, it’s in my respiteblock.”  
  
“Of fucking course,” you groan, but it’s mostly for show.  You couldn’t feel bad right now even if the Empress’ personal guard came down to carry out your cull order from Her Imperiousness Herself.  A few more minutes have to pass before either of you are really capable of coordinating your various arms and legs to untangle, but the cuddling is nice anyway.  Once you’re upright and somewhat functioning, your fish troll (yours, oh fuck you love the sound of that!) succeeds a wobbly attempt to stand and drags you up with him.  The walk to his room is more like a mobile game of grab-ass: you just can’t keep your hands to yourselves.  He swoops you up into his arms, making you yelp, and carries you down the stairs before you can even try a step on your own.  
  
You take turns cleaning up in the ablutiontrap.  There really isn’t a point to using a bucket right now.  Neither of you are expected to make a genetic contribution to the mothergrub for another sweep at least and there’s no use dirtying a pail if you’re going to toss it out anyway, so you forego it, but it’s with a tiny pang of regret.  You want to see what your colors will look like mixed, but you’ll have to wait till next time.  That just gives you more of an excuse for there to be a next time.  
  
After you’ve gone, Eridan takes a turn, and you end up back in his recuperacoon while you wait, letting the sopor draw out some of the fatigue in your tired limbs.  You’re actually dosing when the cool brush of his palm startles you back to alertness.  He hushes you.  
  
“Go back to sleep, lowe,” he tells you.  You grab the hand petting your face and give it an insistent tug before he can try to leave again.  
  
“Not without you, fuckwit.”  He goes easier than you thought, sliding in beside you without protest.  You’re both still completely bare and when he wraps around you it’s bliss.  To your further surprise, he didn’t use any of those frilly soaps he had it there when he washed himself.  He doesn’t smell of anything more than himself and sopor, and it sends a little thrill through you to rub your cheeks and chin over him, marking him up all over again.  He does the same to you until your scents are so tangled up together there’s no telling them apart.  
  
By the time you’re drifting off again, his fingers are tangled in your hair, scratching light circles, and you’ve pillowed your chin on his chest.  
  
“Pity you so much, Kar,” he purrs at you.  You can’t even open your eyes, you’ve sunk so close to sleep, but you do manage to return his feelings.  
  
“Pity you too, you pretentious, sweet idiot.”


	4. A Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter. Enter a not-too-happy Kanaya!

It must be getting on a couple of hours past first rise when you start surfacing to consciousness as you only ever feel this groggy when you oversleep.  Dullness clings and sucks at the edges of your mind and weighs everything down. You only become aware of the information your body is sending your pan in tiny bites and have to piece them together to get a whole picture.

The first thing you’re actively aware of is how warm your sopor is.  It’s set much higher than your normal range, and it makes you squirm uncomfortably.  That leads to a new set of discoveries, first being that you are sore in places that have never been sore before.  It’s surprisingly not unpleasant, an odd sort of mix of raw sensitivity and faint aching that does interesting things to you.  The second discovery is a warm, solid weight on your chest that doesn’t seem inclined to move.

After an effort of will you finally manage to crack one eye open.  The world is a wash of bleary shapes and colors without your glasses which is expected.  What isn’t expected is how much the dark lump resting on your chest resembles a mop of unruly hair or how achingly familiar the two orange bumps of horns sticking out of it are.  Karkat is sleeping on you.

Oh, _glub_.

The quiet flood of panic that spikes through you slams the heavy dose of sopor out of your system.  In the fog of sleep, you had almost managed to convince yourself that the events of yesterday were part of some extremely vivid dream, that you had fallen asleep again at some point during your lonely exile in the recreationblock, and your mind had summoned up a steamy narrative to ease the hot desire that you thought to deny.  It was real though.  Everything was real, and even after you swore to hold yourself in check this time you still threw yourself at him, desperate and wanting, when he offered.

You fucked up.  Again.  

His weight is still a warm comfort.  As long as he sleeps you can cling to him and pretend, so instead of getting up and going through your evening routine, you continue to soak in the slime, staying motionless as much as you can so you won’t disturb his sleep.  He looks so relaxed like this, happy- you want to commit every detail to memory so you’ll have something to visit later and imagine that you could make him that happy all the time.  You absently pet him from time to time, only light touches stroking between his horns and down his back, mapping the patterns of old scars.

Karkat won’t sleep forever, of course, even when you let him follow his own schedule.  Eventually the rhythm of his breathing shifts as he surfaces back to consciousness.  He stretches, reaching an arm over your shoulder so he’s sprawled further over you, and bumps your chin with one of his horns.  Then he chirps a pleasant little greeting that makes your throat stick.

“Frng, feel like my pan’s been replaced with wet cement,” is the first thing he says, and it’s so neutrally conversational your rolling thunderstorm of emotions dies in a confused gurgle.  

You can’t think of any way to respond to it so you ask, “how’s the leg,” instead.

“Numb,” he replies then smothers a chuckle into your collar bone.  “Other parts of me, not so much.”

He’s... laughing?  Your thinkpan doesn’t quite know how to handle that information right now.  You were ready for avoidance or anger, maybe grudging resignation, probably anything but casual joking.  You feel like you walked onto a movie set with the wrong script, and now you’re stuttering over your lines.  All you reply with is a muted, “Oh.”

He blinks, and turns his head up to stare at you hard until it makes you want to wiggle under the sopor despite its heat.

“Eridan, you okay?”

“No.”  It’s out of your mouth before you can really think.  Half a breath later you’re horrified to realize it’s true.

“Shit,”  he struggles to get upright in the thick slime, pulls away and leaves you cold as he hugs his arms to his chest.  “Oh shit, I’m sorry I didn’t-  Uh.   I’ll just... yeah.”  He’s clamoring over the side of the recuperacoon and making a line for your ablutionblock before you can stop him, but you don’t try.  You just sit there and let him flee, completely lost for an explanation.  You don’t pull yourself out of the sopor till you can hear the water running in the next room.

The slog to your next available bathroom is long enough to leave you shivering by the time you reach it.  You should have grabbed a towel or something but didn’t want to invade Karkat’s space again.  You pass through the recreationblock on the way and note that your clothes from the previous day are gone; your lusus must have picked them up out of habit and taken them to the wash.  The cushions still look disheveled though.  You try to put that out of your mind before it can stick there and hurry to the shower a little faster.  It doesn’t work.

 

* * *

 

You’re clearer-headed after ablutions but have no better idea for what to do about this mess.  You were sure you screwed something up the first time.  Now you think your little freak-out might have accomplished what pailing hadn’t.  When you get back to your room Karkat isn’t there or in the bathroom either, which is both a relief and a disappointment.  You’re going to have to find him and talk at some point. You just aren’t sure what you’re going to say.

Whatever it is can wait until after you’re dressed.  And maybe also after you’ve eaten since your empty digestive sac is making insistent noises.  You summon up an outfit for the day but only pull on the pants and shirt.  You want your cape or scarf so badly, some piece of your normal armor, but those are better for intimidation than honest conversation, which would be another disaster on top of everything else.  You resist temptation, leave them lying on the back of your computer chair for later and go to the small galleyblock.

Karkat’s there.  He’s sitting on one of the stools, scowling dubiously at a plate of something that your dad is nosing toward him across the counter.  He’s also not wearing any pants, just his sweater and a pair of... okay yeah that’s your boxer-briefs.  Of course it is. Your lusus cleaned up his to be washed.  It makes your stomach flutter in a whole different way to see your royal violet plastered over him so intimately.  You have to squash the feeling down before it gets too distracting.  Swooning all over him will make this harder, more awkward.  

You don’t want to startle him, so you announce your presence by softly clearing your throat.  He glances up at you then back down quickly with a subdued “hey.”

“Hey,” you return.  For a moment you can’t move, too divided between wanting to run back to your respite block and needing to stick things through and talk to him.  Your lusus pushes a second plate over, obviously for you, and it helps bolster your resolve.  You finally cross the gap and take a seat next to your (you hope still) friend.  

Karkat speaks before you have a chance to.  “I’m sorry I fucked this up already.”

You jerk like you’ve been slapped.  How could he think- okay no, you know why he thinks he’s at fault, Karkat _always_ thinks it’s his fault.  Fuck, it might be half the reason you’ve fallen so hard for him, he’s practically pale for the universe, trying to fix everyone else’s problems, never mind how many of his own he has to deal with.  When something inevitably goes wrong, he brings it all back down on his head.

“You didn’t do a fuckin’ thing so stop puttin’ yourself down ower nothin’,” you tell him.  He scrunches up defensively which kicks you in your bloodpusher.  Maybe your tone was a little too harsh.  

Letting out a long sigh you poke at your breakfast- your lusus isn’t exactly a chef, he made nothing more extravagant than roe on toast- and try to gather your thoughts into words.

“I’m not gonna push you into anythin’ you don’t want to do, an’ I mean it.  So you don’t hawe to pretend you’re okay with this if you aren’t.”

He looks you over carefully and asks, “are _you_ okay with this?”

You swallow.  

“Kar, I’m fuckin’ stupid ower you, an’ I would do anythin’ to hawe you feel the same way about me, but I ain’t as clueless as what some would giwe me credit a bein’.  If you don’t want me, I don’t want that to screw up us bein’ friends.”

God you feel sick.  Just speaking the words is painful.  You don’t want to make that mistake again and lose another friend, even if that means giving up a chance to have something more, but it eats you anyway, being taunted with it.  You had a taste of what things could be like, the unguarded intimacy and trust he poured into and filled you with till you hurt in such a wonderful way.  You want that so badly, but you don’t want to take something that isn’t freely given.  Losing him altogether now would hurt worse.  

He stares at you silently for too long, and you’re about to grab your plate and leave, even though you aren’t all that hungry anymore.

“Eridan you idiot, I want you.  I mean the- all of it.  What we did last day, and the other stuff that’s supposed to go with that.”  You have to backpedal over the words and replay them in your head twice again before they’ll make sense because you weren’t expecting that reaction.  You end up gawking at him dumbly.

“You... _want_ me?”  

He gapes at you, mouth snapping open and closed as he tries to form a coherent sentence in response.  You really don’t know how you could screw this up any further at this point.

“I- what- you- yes!  Of _course_ I do, you retarded goddamn bulgejerk!  Is that that this is about?  Did you really think I’d just jump on your bulge for a favor?”

Reality crashes your veil of self-loathing.  You did.  Shit, you are an idiot, you actually entertained the thought that Karkat “Let Me Tell You About True Romance” Vantas would throw himself at you out of some sort of fucked-up obligation.  You’re so far torn between crawling away to find a place to hide and jumping around like a sugar-high wiggler that you can’t figure out what to do besides bury your face into your hands and laugh.

His fingers pull at your wrists, pry your hands away, then cup your chin, warm, firm and demanding until you do look up at him.  Then his mouth comes crashing down on yours.

You squeak, startled.  Your torn lip reopens over the sharp points of your teeth from the force he’s using, but you can’t be bothered to care because he’s kissing you, hungry and insistent like he’ll starve without the taste of you.  When his tongue darts over the ragged line, licking at your blood, you open to draw him in.

Somewhere between the stuttered moan he draws out of you and his pleased answering hum, a steel trap finally springs closed over the idea that he really means it.  He’s yours, your matesprit, real and proper.  It fills you up with giddy joy that neatly overwhelms everything else that had been tumbling around inside you since last night.

You don’t stop kissing him until you’ve pulled him into your lap and pinned his back to the counter.  Karkat breaks away and chuckles at you softly.

“Do you realize how much I love you now?” he asks.

“Don’t know,” you hum and peck his mouth, “I might need another demonstration.”

Your stomach picks that point to rumble, and he shoves you playfully.

“Take care of that first, dumbass,” he orders you and tries to wiggle back to his seat.  You let him go reluctantly, but get a good palmful of his butt in the process for the trouble.  He swats you and growls, “nubs off the merchandise till after breakfast.”

“Can’t help it, purple looks so good on you,” you lean over, purr right into his ear before giving him a little nip and savor the way it make him shiver.  It really does look good, too, you aren’t just saying that.  He’s built wider than you so your intimates aren’t a great fit on him.  The fabric ends up stretched and outlining tantalizing bits that you can’t help sneaking glances of.  You want to sneak touches too, and it heats your insides.

You’re going to have to get him a quadrant token.  Nothing flashy. Flashy isn’t Karkat, and while you would love to see something big and bright draped in some obvious place where no one will miss it, he’d never feel comfortable with that.  

Something smaller then, but what?  You don’t think he’d do rings, too bulky on fingers that need to be nimble on weapon handles.  A necklace maybe, but too small and it would be too close to a collar and too big could pose the same problem of getting in the way in a fight.

You only notice you’ve completely checked out of reality while musing on this when Karkat makes an indignant grunt and bats you away from the spot just under his ear where you’ve been nuzzling.  

“Would you quit that?  It tickles,” he grouses at you.  There’s a twist in the corner of his mouth where he’s trying not to smile though, so you know you aren’t really in trouble.  Now that you’re looking at his ear, though, a thought occurs to you.

“Hey, Kar, how would you feel about a piercin’?”  You trace the curve of his ear with a claw for emphasis.  He snorts.

“What, you mean purposefully poke holes in myself?”

“Just a little one,” you pout. “You could wear a little amethyst stud, an’ I’d get one to match.”

His eyebrows fold up in a surprising display of skepticism.  “You would... actually want to wear my blood color?

“Yeah, sure I would,” you nod. “Why wouldn’t I?”  It isn’t like anyone would be able to tell a little ruby chip apart from your other ornamentation, and you’d have a little reminder of him no matter where you went.  The more you think about it, the more you really like the idea.

“Yeah, okay.  I think I could do that,” he finally relents.  The smile that lights up your face melts him right into your arms.

You manage to make it through breakfast without too many distractions.  Turns out your appetite did come back after all.

 

* * *

 

There isn’t nearly enough time after breakfast for make-outs in your opinion.  You need to get his leg re-bandaged, then find something for him to wear as a temporary replacement for the ruined pants from last night, which ends up being a bigger hassle than expected.  By the time you’re done and ready to leave, Karkat has been gone from his hive for almost a full rotational period.  His lusus is likely to be grumpy and hungry, so you put enthusiastic quadrant bonding on hold to get him returned before he ends up needing to replace all of his furniture.

Your lusus is delighted to be taken with you this time.  He isn’t strong enough to carry you both for the full journey, which is a shame because he would have been faster than the boat, but there will still be a ways to go between the dock and Karkat’s place, and he can’t walk on his injury that far, no matter how good his leg’s feeling at the moment or how loudly he argues that he’s fine.  It claws at you to realize part of that bravado is born of a lifetime of self-preservation.  He’s always needed to appear strong and untouchable when a dominance scuffle could turn into a death sentence with a scratch.

He doesn’t trust his neighbors to keep their snouts to themselves if they see him hobbled- rightly so, you think- but you’re going to make damn sure they’ll think twice about picking a fight with Karkat.  He’s your matesprit now, and they’re going to know it.

You go back to your room and pick out a different cape, the one with the biggest flared collar and a good drape.  Karkat groans and rolls his eyes when he sees it, but his reaction changes to mild confusion when you hang it over your arm instead of putting it on.  You just grin and say, “Trust me.”

The first moon is high with the second one climbing by the time you cast off.  The overwater part of the trip turns out wonderful.  Weather is perfect for sailing tonight, a little chilly but otherwise fine, and you catch a great tailwind that shaves off some time.  It’s a little hard to want to go faster when you get Karkat’s undivided attention out here, so maybe you take a little bit of a round about way, but nothing terribly off course.  You still end up docking with an extra twenty minutes to spare anyway.

You help Karkat out of your little vessel and get him steady on the dock then softly whistle your lusus over.  The skyhorse floats low, neck bowed, ready for a rider, and you stoop and lock your fingers together palms up to form a step.  Karkat just stands there, expression slowly darkening.

“No.   _Hell_ no.”

“Ah, c’mon, Kar,” you goad while just barely resisting the urge to roll your eyes.  “He ain’t gonna bite you.  I’ll box his fuckin’ fins if he does.”  You say the last part lowly.  Your lusus makes an indignant snort and tosses his head: message received, no messing around.

“I’ll fall off,” he continues to argue. “It will be disastrous for both my pride and continued bodily well being.”

“What’ll be disastrous for your well bein’ is tryin’ to limp several klicks on a gimp leg.  Dad’s the best at what he does, an’ I’m here to help besides, so get on.”

He hugs himself tightly and looks askance at the skyhorse.  “Uh, how do I even...”

“C’mere an’ put your hands on his withers-”

“His what?”

“His shoulders, Kar, where they’d be if he had walk fronds what like hoofbeasts got.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, then put the foot a your good leg in my hands here- there like that- an’ swing the bad one ower.”

Your lusus hovers, patient and tolerant of the whole affair while you coach Karkat through correct mounting technique, even when he hugs the creature around its neck and refuses to sit upright once he’s actually on.  This is proving less of a brilliant idea than you had originally planned, but you’re determined to make it work anyway.

“Gotta get your seat right, lowe,” you try to coax him.

“No thanks, I’m good.  Can he float a little lower?”  His grip tightens, and your dad witters at you pleadingly.

“He’ll be on the ground if you strangle him,” you point out.

“Oh shit, sorry!”  Hesitantly, he releases his death grip around the lusus’ neck and slowly straightens up.  You rest your hand on the small of his back to steady him, and when he seems a little more comfortable with the position you pull the final piece from your sylladex.

He looks at you questioningly when you toss your cape over his shoulders and secure the clasp.

“Eridan what the fuck.  I look like a tool in this thing.”

You scoff.  “It’s the height a highblood fashion, I’ll have you know.  Wouldn’t kill you to get some culture outside a cinematic features.”

“Hey, I’ve got plenty of culture,” he snaps, “and in case it wasn’t so very blindingly obvious before, or you’re suffering from an acute case of head trauma induce amnesia- which would explain a lot of things right now, actually- I’m not a highblood.”

“No, but I am.”  You grab the collar of the cape to drag him down for a kiss and purr against his mouth, “an’ ain’t any a them cretins around your lawn ring gonna mistake that.”

The way he says, “oh,” make something in you tense and shudder, especially when he follows it by tipping your chin up to rub his cheek against yours.  The heady burst of pheromones plow right into your brain and down your spine, screaming _MINE!_ the whole way.

“Take me home, Ampora,” he growls into your ear.  You bob your head in agreement, chest suddenly too tight to say anything.

 

* * *

 

Dad isn’t used to multiple passengers so you don’t push him too hard, only riding double when the terrain gets uneven enough to slow you down, and otherwise walking out in front.  It doesn’t take long for thin dottings of hives to start appearing once you’re well clear of the beach, but the coastline is empty, and for the most part it’s just you and Karkat chattering comfortably about all the inane, stupid things you usually do.  You feel better when he talks easily, like nothing changed at all between you in the last several hours, but there’s a fierce, possessive joy that you don’t want to crush any longer when you can ride behind him, pressed close enough to feel the vibrations of his squawk blister in your chest when he speaks.

He has to give you directions when you get far enough inland for the hives to start showing up in evenly spaced patterns separated by lawnrings.  His hive is moderately sized for a lowblood actually, now that you’re thinking about it. You start idly wondering exactly how a mutant like Karkat got a lusus or access to the construction drones.  It’s a curious little mystery that makes itself a nest in the back of your pan and reminds you to look into it later when you aren’t so preoccupied.  Right now you have to focus on helping him down from the back of your lusus and making sure that dad is settled in enough not to wander into a neighbor’s yard and pick a fight with other lusii.  

As Karkat gets his feet steady under him, you glance away just in time to notice a troll in the next hive over staring bug-eyed out his view planes at you.  You smile wide enough to show most of your teeth and slowly spread your fins, and a curtain twitches hurriedly back in place.

You only notice that Karkat has gone ahead of you when you hear his worried voice from his doorway say, “Something’s not right.”

“Kar, wait for me,” you warn and hurry to catch up, but he’s already ducked into his hive.  It’s brighter than you expected when you follow him in, and the reason why becomes apparent almost immediately.  The sunblocking curtains on the main floor have all been drawn back, letting the mid-evening moonlight spill through the ports.  Karkat paces ahead of you into the middle of what looks like his loungeblock, looking around with mild apprehension.

“Dad?” he calls out. “I’m home, where are you?”

“I already took care of him, Karkat,” a voice calls out from the next room.  You tense but Karkat’s stance relaxes, and he limps forward a little quicker, smiling.  The creature that steps around the corner to greet him could be plucked straight from a rainbow drinker novel: tall, straight-backed, impeccably dressed.  You’ve only talked with Kanaya Maryam over trollian, but her image is unmistakable, especially since the faintly glowing troll hurries over to enfold her moirail in a tight hug.  Karkat goes stiff at the overt display of affection and coughs politely as his face darkens.

Neither of them had been fibbing even a little. You are officially quadrant corners with a member of the undead legion.

“Kanaya, I have company,” he tries to deflect.  You want to shrink right into the floor when she shoots you a withering glare over his shoulder.

“Yes, and he can be patient while I attend to my quadrant mate.  Karkat you had me worried sick!”  

“I trolled you last night and told you I wasn’t going to back till tonight.”  He’s starting to fidget under her inspection, and she puts her hands to his shoulders to still him.

“Indeed.   _After_ you had already been missing for several hours, and your message was terribly brief.”  The fussy frown she’s wearing deepens when her eyes skip over his bandaged leg.  “And you are hurt.”

Karkat looks to you, shrugs helplessly, blush still creeping over his face, then back to the female troll.  He smooths his fingers over over the bridge of her nose, the crease between her eyebrows, and you quickly look away before it can cross the line to indecent.

“Shoosh,” you hear him say. “I’m fine, Eridan took care of it.”  Kanaya sniffs haughtily, then sniffs again, a deeper breath as she scents him.  The accompanying growl that rises off of her sets your teeth on edge.

“Just what else did he, ‘take care of.’”  

“Now, hey, it’s not like that!”  Your head snaps up, fins flared wide and answering her rumble with your own.

Kanaya is between you and Karkat unnaturally fast.

“Then explain it to me.  In small words, Ampora.”

Black lips peel back from her hyper-long fangs, two perfect needles for piercing arteries.  Seadwellers like yourself are apex predators; there’s very little that can ping your instincts as an actual threat in such a visceral way.  A healthy, pissed off rainbow drinker, as it turns out, is one of them.  You can’t throttle your hiss fast enough as she advances on you to try to spit out a reasonable explanation.

Reflex pulls your strife deck open on the Crosshairs but there’s no way you can use them.  Karkat is too close, struggling with his lamed leg to catch up to his moirail and calm her, and even if you didn’t hit him, firing would still destroy part of his hive and probably kill Kanaya, even if she is a near immortal monstrosity at this point.  Not the best way to engender flushed feelings.  You can’t fight here, especially not with that.  

The next idea you get goes so hard against your primal brain you have to hold your breath and slam your eyes shut to block everything out.  Flattening your fins back, you tilt your head back and offer your throat to her.

Kanaya stops just short of touching you, canines hovering over your lateral cervical sensors where she could spill you open with ease.  You shudder when her breath ghost over them, too cold for her blood and distinctly wrong.

“I am waiting.”

“I lowe him,” you burst out.  There’s pause of perfect silence as Kanaya draws away from you.  When you risk open your eyes, she looks a little dumbfounded so you try to push home.

“Kar means the world to me.  I- I won’t hurt him, would newer.”  As if on cue, Karkat steps up beside her and laces his fingers through hers.

“He’s telling the truth, Kanaya.  This was my choice.  And I’d be a little pissed off if you eviscerated my matesprit in the middle of my livingblock.”

“Your matespr- oh, goodness.”  Her hand goes to her mouth, chagrined as her tension leaks away.  “I’m sorry, I think I may have overreacted a little.”

“Aye,” you agree, while Karkat says, “You think?”  She glares at you both then sighs.

“This is just so sudden.  You two never even officially courted a quadrant, and now you are flushed?”

“It... just sort of happened,” he agrees.  You think it’s safe to stop with the submission display when Kanaya squeezes his hand.

“As long as you’re happy, Karkat.”  To you she says, “since you already deflowered my moirail, I guess there really isn’t much point in fighting your quadrant choice at this juncture.”

“To be fair,” he pipes up from beside her, “I deflowered him right back.”

“He did,” you agree. “Pretty thoroughly, too.”  She sighs at you both again and hides the rest of her face in her hand.

 

* * *

  

The first moon is sagging low, but you aren’t in any hurry to leave.  You fetched your lusus in when it became clear your stay was going to be a bit longer, and he’s well rested after a night of lounging in the culinaryblock with Karkat’s crabdad where they’ve been sneaking tidbits for the last couple of hours.  There will plenty of time still for him to fly you back home, and you’re too comfortable.

Karkat is settled between you and Kanaya on the couch, with a bowl of frozen dairy treat in his lap and his wounded leg propped up across hers so she can examine it.

“This is going to be a thing with you two isn’t it,” he grumbles around the spoon in his mouth. “I have hooked up with the world’s fussiest trolls.”

“Shoosh and enjoy it,” you murmur into his hair.  "You know you do the same ewery other day."  His head is snuggled right up under your chin so it rests between his horns, and you can feel the straining clicks of a smothered purr through the contact.  He’s liking this way more than he wants to let on.

“If you did not want to be fretted over, I doubt you would have sought out quadrant mates in the first place,” Kanaya adds as she tucks his bandage back in place and carefully smooths it flat.

“Sought out,” he scoffs.  “Fate dropped you two pathetic wrecks in my lap.  Serendipity at its finest.”

“Don’t you forget it,” you agree.  You don't think you've ever been happier for Serendipity to have proved you wrong.


End file.
